A GREAT AND ENTHRALLING ADVENTURE

The ‘new’ publishing company was established in 1953 as a separate entity alongside the printing business, which became full owner of the publishing company. Both businesses were under the same management and Board of Directors. The practical management of the publishing house came into the hands of De Ridder, who only later became part of the Mouton manage ment. Vonk, his old colleague at Brill, would leave Mouton after working there only a few months. At first the publishing house was located in a building at Z.O. Buitensingel 150b in The Hague. (Soon thereafter, the address on the letterhead appears as Z.O. Buitensingel 150.) In the mid fifties the publishing house moved to an old orphanage at Kerklaan 74 in Rijswijk. In the sixties it moved again to The Hague to Herderstraat 5, the huge building at the corner of the Lutherse Burgwal where the Mouton printing house had been for a long time. The first letter from De Ridder to Van Schooneveld which is in the C.H. van Schooneveld Collection in the Leiden University Library, dates from October 8, 1953. De Ridder announces in that letter that a decision will soon be made concerning a series, ‘en met 95% zekerheid durf ik reeds te zeggen, dat zij gunstig uitvalt’ 4 [‘and I dare say that it is 95 percent certain that it will turn out well’] (see 111. 7). An offer from Mouton Printers to Mouton Publishers in connection with the printing of the first books dates from that same period (see 111. 8). On November 3, 1953 Van Schooneveld wrote to Jakobson: ‘I am negotiating with a publisher about a Slavic series.’ 5 On November 22, 1953 the deal was sealed: ‘My experience with Brill is none too happy, and it is a good thing that the series at last went to Mouton.’ 6 At the same time, after Van Schooneveld’s negotiations, Brill was just starting to publish a book series for Jakobson: Studies in Russian epic tradition. Printing orders were at issue: Brill sold the books on commission. The first part in this series (‘published [...] under the auspices of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University’) would appear in 1954, that is, after the official beginning of Mouton. Slavistics occupied a central place in Mouton’s publishing activity from the very beginning. De Ridder had become interested in the subject owing to his association with Eastern European forced laborers in Germany dur ing World War II. The titles that appeared on this subject from 1954 were published primarily in Slavistic printings and reprintings (at first also called: Slavistische drukken en herdrukken), a series of which Van Schooneveld was

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