The Cape Editions are a selection of short books, frequently in translation, issued by UK publisher Jonathan Cape

Jonathan Cape

Jonathan Cape was a London-based publisher founded in 1919 as "Page & Co" by Herbert Jonathan Cape , formerly a manager at Duckworth who had worked his way up from a position of bookshop errand boy. Cape brought with him the rights to cheap editions of the popular author Elinor Glyn and sales of...

 from 1967–1971.

The collection has been described as "the remarkable Cape Editions series of seminal modern texts: poetry, prose, anthropology, drama, many of them pioneering translations".

The general editor of the series was professor and poet Nathaniel Tarn

Nathaniel Tarn

Nathaniel Tarn is an American poet, essayist, anthropologist, and translator. He was born to a French mother and a British father. He lived in Paris until age 7, then in Belgium until age 11.-Education:...

.

Cape Editions

#	Title	Author	Year	Original title or source	Cape year	Translator	SBN / ISBN
1	The Scope of Anthropology	Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern anthropology"....	after 1950	?	1967	Sherry Ortner Paul, Robert A. Paul	S: SBN H: SBN
2	Call Me Ishmael	Charles Olson Charles Olson Charles Olson , was a second generation American modernist poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance...	1947				S: SBN H: SBN
3	Writing Degree Zero Writing Degree Zero Writing Degree Zero is a book of literary criticism by Roland Barthes. First published in 1953, it was Barthes' first full-length book and was intended, as Barthes writes in the introduction, as "no more than an Introduction to what a History of Writing might be."-Structure:Writing Degree Zero is...	Roland Barthes Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...	1953	Le Degré zéro de l'écriture	1967	Annette Lavers, Colin Smith	S: SBN H: SBN
4	Elements of Semiology Elements of Semiology Elements of Semiology is a compendium-like text by French semiotician Roland Barthes, originally published under the title of "Éléments de Sémiologie" in the French review Communications...	Roland Barthes	1964	Éléments de sémiologie			S: SBN H: SBN
5	I Wanted to Write a Poem	William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine, having graduated from the University of Pennsylvania...	1958				S: SBN H: SBN
6	The Memorandum The Memorandum -Plot:Josef Gross, a director of an unnamed organization, receives a memorandum written in Ptydepe, a constructed language, about an audit. He finds out that Ptydepe was created to get rid of similarities between words, such as fox and box, and emotional connexions. He tries to get someone to...	Václav Havel Václav Havel Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...	1965	Vyrozumění	1967	Vera Blackwell	S: SBN H: SBN
7	Selected Poems	Nazim Hikmet Nazim Hikmet Nâzım Hikmet Ran , commonly known as Nâzım Hikmet , was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist and memoirist. He was acclaimed for the "lyrical flow of his statements"...	20th c.	?	1967	Taner Baybars	S: SBN H: SBN
8	Aphorisms & Letters	Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was a German scientist, satirist and Anglophile. As a scientist, he was the first to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to experimental physics in Germany...	18th c.	?			S: SBN H: SBN
9	Tango	Slavomir Mrozek	1964	Tango			S: SBN H: SBN
10	On Love ... Aspects of a Single Theme	José Ortega y Gasset José Ortega y Gasset José Ortega y Gasset was a Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist working during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. He was, along with Nietzsche, a proponent of the idea of perspectivism.-Biography:José Ortega y Gasset was...	20th c.	?			S: SBN H: SBN
11	Manhood	Michel Leiris Michel Leiris Julien Michel Leiris was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer.-Biography:...	1939	L’Âge d’homme			S: SBN H: SBN
12	Bees: Their Vision, Chemical Senses, and Language	Karl von Frisch Karl von Frisch Karl Ritter von Frisch was an Austrian ethologist who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973, along with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz....	20th c.	?			S: SBN H: SBN
13	Lunar Caustic	Malcolm Lowry Malcolm Lowry Clarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.-Biography:...	1968		1968		S: SBN H: SBN
14	Twenty Prose Poems	Charles Baudelaire Charles Baudelaire Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...	1869?	possibly selections from Le Spleen de Paris Le Spleen de Paris Le Spleen de Paris, also known as Paris Spleen or Petits Poèmes en prose, is a collection of 51 short prose poems by Charles Baudelaire....			S: SBN H: SBN
15	Journeys	Günter Eich Günter Eich Günter Eich was a German lyricist, dramatist, and author. He was born in Lebus, on the Oder River, and educated in Leipzig, Berlin, and Paris....	20th c.	?			S: SBN H: SBN
16	A Close Watch on the Trains	Bohumil Hrabal Bohumil Hrabal Bohumil Hrabal was a Czech writer, regarded as one of the best writers of the 20th century.- Life and work :...	1965	Ostře sledované vlaky			S: SBN H: SBN
17	Mayan Letters	Charles Olson	1953		1968	Robert Creeley Robert Creeley Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...  (ed.)	S: SBN H: SBN
18	The Courtship Habits of the Great Crested Grebe	Julian Huxley Julian Huxley Sir Julian Sorell Huxley FRS was an English evolutionary biologist, humanist and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century evolutionary synthesis...	1914				S: SBN H: SBN
19	The Supermale Supermale (novel) The Supermale is a 1902 novel by the French writer Alfred Jarry. Its irreverent and darkly humorous storyline involves elements of science fiction and features a race between a train and a team of cyclists fueled by "perpetual-motion food", and the exploits of a "supermale" capable of prodigious...	Alfred Jarry Alfred Jarry Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....	1902	Le Surmâle			S: SBN H: SBN
20	Poems & Antipoems	Nicanor Parra Nicanor Parra Nicanor Parra Sandoval is a mathematician and poet born in San Fabián de Alico, Chile, who has been considered to be a popular poet in Chile with enormous influence and popularity in Latin America, and also considered one of the most important poets of the Spanish language literature...	1954	Poemas y antipoemas			S: SBN H: SBN
21	In Praise of Krishna: Songs from the Bengali	Various	?	?			S: SBN H: SBN
22	History Will Absolve Me History Will Absolve Me "History Will Absolve Me" is the concluding sentence and subsequent title of a four-hour speech made by Fidel Castro on 16 October 1953. Castro made the speech in his own defense in court against the charges brought against him after leading an attack on the Moncada Barracks...	Fidel Castro Fidel Castro Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...	1953	La historia me absolverá			S: SBN H: SBN
23	Selected Poems	Georg Trakl Georg Trakl Georg Trakl was an Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most important Austrian Expressionists.- Life and work :Trakl was born and lived the first 18 years of his life in Salzburg, Austria...	after 1912	?	1968	Robert Grenier Robert Grenier (poet) Robert Grenier is a contemporary American poet associated with the Language School. He was founding co-editor of the influential magazine This...  et al, Christopher Middleton Christopher Middleton (poet) Christopher Middleton is a British poet and translator, especially of German literature.-Life:He was born in Truro, Cornwall, in 1926. He studied at Merton College, Oxford. He then held academic positions at the University of Zürich and King's College London. He became Professor of Germanic...  (ed.)	S: SBN H: SBN
24	Selected Poems	Yves Bonnefoy Yves Bonnefoy Yves Bonnefoy is a French poet and essayist. Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher....	after 1945	?			S: SBN H: SBN
25	Ferdinand	Louis Zukofsky Louis Zukofsky Louis Zukofsky was an American poet. He was one of the founders and the primary theorist of the Objectivist group of poets and thus an important influence on subsequent generations of poets in America and abroad.-Life:...	1968				S: SBN H: SBN
26	The Recluse	Adalbert Stifter Adalbert Stifter Adalbert Stifter was an Austrian writer, poet, painter, and pedagogue. He was especially notable for the vivid natural landscapes depicted in his writing, and has long been popular in the German-speaking world, while almost entirely unknown to English readers.-Life:Born in Oberplan in Bohemia , he...	19th c.	?			S: SBN H: SBN
27	Dialectical Materialism	Henri Lefebvre Henri Lefebvre Henri Lefebvre was a French sociologist, Marxist intellectual, and philosopher, best known for his work on dialectics, Marxism, everyday life, cities, and space.-Biography:...	1940	Le Matérialisme dialectique			S: SBN H: SBN
28	Missing from the available listing						S: SBN H: SBN
29	Soul on Ice Soul On Ice Soul On Ice is a memoir and collection of essays written by Eldridge Cleaver. Originally written in Folsom State Prison in 1965, and published three years later in 1968, it is Cleaver's best known writing and remains a seminal work in African-American literature...	Eldridge Cleaver Eldridge Cleaver Leroy Eldridge Cleaver better known as Eldridge Cleaver, was a leading member of the Black Panther Party and a writer...	1968				S: SBN H: SBN
30	The Human Sciences and Philosophy	Lucien Goldmann Lucien Goldmann Lucien Goldmann was a French philosopher and sociologist of Jewish-Romanian origin...	1966	Sciences humaines et philosophie			S: SBN H: SBN
31	Selected Poems	André Breton André Breton André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....	20th c.	?	1969		S: SBN H: SBN
32	Soap	Francis Ponge Francis Ponge Francis Jean Gaston Alfred Ponge was a French essayist and poet. In many ways, he combined the two — essay and poem — into a single art form.-Life:...	1967	Le Savon	1969	Lane Dunlop	S: SBN H: SBN
33	Histoire extraordinaire: Essay on a dream of Baudelaire's	Michel Butor Michel Butor -Life and work:Michel Marie François Butor was born in Mons-en-Barœul. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, graduating in 1947. He has taught in Egypt, Manchester, Salonika, the United States, and Geneva...	1961	Histoire extraordinaire : essai sur un rêve de Baudelaire	1969	Richard Howard Richard Howard Richard Howard is an American poet, literary critic, essayist, teacher, and translator. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio and is a graduate of Columbia University, where he studied under Mark Van Doren, and where he now teaches...	S: SBN H: ISBN 0224616641
34	Conversations with Claude Lévi-Strauss	Georges Charbonnier	1961	Entretiens avec Claude Lévi-Strauss			S: SBN H: SBN
35	An Absence	Uwe Johnson Uwe Johnson Uwe Johnson was a German writer, editor, and scholar.- Life :Johnson was born in Kammin in Pomerania . His father was a Swedish-descent peasant from Mecklenburg and his mother was from Pommern...	1964	Eine Reise wegwohin			S: SBN H: SBN
36	A Critique of Pure Tolerance	Robert Paul Wolff Robert Paul Wolff Robert Paul Wolff is a contemporary American political philosopher and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Wolff has written widely on many topics in political philosophy such as Marxism, tolerance , political justification and democracy. Wolff is also well known for his work on... , Barrington Moore Jr., Herbert Marcuse Herbert Marcuse Herbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...	1965				S: SBN H: SBN
37	The Garden Party The Garden Party (play) The Garden Party is a play by Václav Havel.- Plot :The protagonist is Hugo Pludek, who is an average person from a middle-class Czech family. His parents are worried about his future so they arrange an appointment for him with the influential Mr...	Václav Havel	1963	Zahradní slavnost			S: SBN H: SBN
38	Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair is a collection of romantic poems by the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, first published in 1924 when Neruda was 19. It was Neruda's second published work, and made his name as a poet...	Pablo Neruda Pablo Neruda Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....	1924	Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada	1969	W. S. Merwin W. S. Merwin William Stanley Merwin is an American poet, credited with over 30 books of poetry, translation and prose. During the 1960s anti-war movement, Merwin's unique craft was thematically characterized by indirect, unpunctuated narration. In the 1980s and 1990s, Merwin's writing influence derived from...	S: SBN H: ISBN 0224617257
39	Genesis as Myth and Other Essays	Edmund Leach Edmund Leach Sir Edmund Ronald Leach was a British social anthropologist of whom it has been said:"It is no exaggeration to say that in sheer versatility, originality, and range of writing he was and still is difficult to match among the anthropologists of the English speaking world".-Personal and academic...	1969		1969		S: SBN H: SBN
40	Cold Mountain	Han-Shan	9th c.	?	1970	Burton Watson Burton Watson Burton Watson is an accomplished translator of Chinese and Japanese literature and poetry. He has received awards including the Gold Medal Award of the Translation Center at Columbia University in 1979, the PEN Translation Prize in 1981 for his translation with Hiroaki Sato of From the Country of...	S: SBN H: SBN
41	The World, the Flesh and the Devil	J. D. Bernal	1929		1970		S: SBN H: ISBN 0224618318
42	The Death of Lysanda	Yitzhak Orpaz	1964	מות ליסאנדה	1970	Richard Flint	S: SBN 224 61873 3 H: SBN 224 61874 1

Later additions

#	Title	Author	Year	Original title or source	Cape year	Translator	SBN / ISBN
?	Poems	Hermann Hesse Hermann Hesse Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...	20th c.	?	1971	James Wright James Wright (poet) James Arlington Wright was an American poet.Wright first emerged on the literary scene in 1956 with The Green Wall, a collection of formalist verse that was awarded the prestigious Yale Younger Poets Prize. But by the early 1960s, Wright, increasingly influenced by the Spanish language...	S: ISBN H: ISBN 0224005545