Routledge to sponsor Dedalus?

We just got the following press release from Dedalus in our inbox:

PRESS RELEASE

Dedalus is proud to announce that Informa plc through its subsidiary company Routledge Books, an imprint of Taylor & Francis, will sponsor Dedalus for the next two years as part of Informa plc’s corporate responsibility programme.

This sponsorship means that Dedalus will be able to honour the commitments it has undertaken to its authors, translators, cultural institutions and other publishers. We will continue to encourage and support new writing, with special emphasis on the dialogue between cultures brought about by literature in translation

Dedalus’s readers can now look forward to translated fiction from Danish, Estonian, Flemish, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish in the next two years as well as more original English language fiction. Dedalus has just bought Made in Yaroslavl, a brilliant first novel by Jeremy Weingard, who lives in the East of England.

“Apart from financial support we hope to benefit from the technical expertise and advice of a large and successful publisher which will be of great benefit to Dedalus. We look forward to working with Routledge Books and making the most of the opportunities this sponsorship programme will provide for Dedalus.”

Eric Lane, M.D of Dedalus Publishers

More details as we get them, but we’re definitely glad¹ that Dedalus won’t have to close down, which seemed increasingly likely after the Arts Council grant debacle.

^{1 Something about this seems strange. Maybe it’s my ingrained American-ness that makes me suspicious, but I don’t think companies are usually in the business of giving money away for no expected return, most especially to literary translation.}