22

A GREAT AND ENTHRALLING ADVENTURE

“nu ben ik werkelijk arrivé”.’ 43 [‘Between 20 or 30 letters arrived each day. One morning there was a letter from the hinterland of Afghanistan and one from the hinterland of Bolivia. That’s when I thought, Now I have really arrived”.’] The above-mentioned files, ordered by personal name, played a central role in the processing of all these items. These editor’s files contain the cor respondence between Van Schooneveld and an author, between Van Schoone- veld and Mouton, carbon copies and photocopies of letters between the author and Mouton Publishers; also telex messages are included here. In many cases one also finds a ‘manuscript evaluation form’ which Van Schooneveld had filled out for use by Mouton. The volume of postal traffic led to a standardized approach to answering letters of potential Mouton authors. There were different form letters: the ‘interest letter’, the ‘acceptance letter’, the ‘condolence letter’ (if there was indeed interest but no possibility for publication), and the ‘rejection letter’. The standard rejection letter sounded as follows: Dear (Dr./Professor) : I have carefully examined your manuscript, “ ”, which you submitted to me for consideration. Although your work is interesting, it presents material and work upon this material which is at considerable variance with the strategy of the series. It would need, in my opinion, so many changes to fit with the aims of the series that it would be more advisable for you to seek publication else where. This does not necessarily reflect upon the quality of the manuscript. Your manuscript has been sent to you via [insured / under separate cover] mail. Thank you for submitting your work to Mouton. Yours sincerely, C.H. van Schooneveld. 44

5. ‘Mouton mange tout’ The Slavistic printings and reprintings series had already developed in the 1950s into an internationally authoritative series in the field of Slavistics. The Janua linguarum, in which Chomsky’s Syntactic structures (1957) blossomed into a bestseller, set a tone in the field of linguistics. Mouton now decided to sharpen its profile in the field of literary theory as well. The De proprietatibus