Rodker's list
Sir: In his review of the Le Corbusier exhibition at the Hayward Gallery (Architecture, 14 March) Gavin Stamp names `two of Corb's most important books' published in English by John Rod- ker who, he claims, — and not for the first time — `normally specialised in porno- graphy'. True, my father did publish what Ed- ward Maggs, who came to his defence elsewhere, describes as `some mildly sala- cious material' (e.g. Casanova, Villon, Restif de la Bretonne) but he also pub- lished, either under his own imprints or in association with others, Ozenfant's Found- ations of Modern Art, drawings of Gaudier-Brzeska and Wyndham Lewis, major works by Pound and T. S. Eliot, the second edition of Joyce's Ulysses and much else.
In addition he was a noted translator from the French (awarded the Legion d'Honneur) and in his later years published many important works on psychoanalysis, notably the German edition of Freud's Collected Works. Carcanet incidentally will shortly issue a new edition of his poems and some of his writings.
I hope this letter will go some way to setting the record straight and perhaps persuade Gavin Stamp that, whatever his interpretation of the word, John Rodker deserves better than the label `specialist in pornography'.
Joan Rodker
71 Kensington Church Street, London W8
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