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A GREAT AND ENTHRALLING ADVENTURE

arbitrary collection of books, that may belong to the same scholarly area, but are very uneven in quality and relevance.] In actuality there was too little editing work done on this series: [...] momenteel publiceren wij boeken die alleen door de copy-editor in zekere zin worden gelezen. [...] Ook ten opzichte van de verhouding van de DPL tot andere series, met name Janua linguarum en de Approaches to semiotics, is de redaktionele politiek zodanig dat de DPL de aansluiting mist met de meest recente ontwikkelingen op het eigen gebied. De ontwikkeling wordt voor een belangrijk deel gedragen door toepassing van linguïstische en semiotische inzichten, theorieën en methodes, op de literatuur. Het komt naar mijn idee te veel voor dat dergelijke literatuurstudies verschijnen in de JL of de AtS. 46 [... we now publish books that in a certain sense have been read only by the copy editor. [...] Also concerning the relationship of the DPL to other series, particu larly Janua linguarum and the Approaches to semiotics, the editorial policy is such that DPL misses the connection with the most recent developments in its own field. The development is in significant measure born by the application of lin guistic and semiotic insights, theories, and methods, to literature. To my mind it happens too often that such literary studies appear in the JL or the AtS.]

A telex dated February, 21,1974 from De Ridder to Van Schooneveld makes it quite clear that the series was not doing well: You know that our series Studies in American Literature and Studies in English Literature in fact sell much more copies than DPL Practica. Would you in princi ple agree to publication of works accepted by you for DPL in one of these other series? Of course we would pay you normal editor s royalty. Otherwise too many manuscripts accepted by you for DPL Practica will have to be rejected by us under the present regulation. 47 The expression ‘Mouton mange tout’, which is ascribed to a saying of Claude Lévi-Strauss in a conversation with Roman Jakobson, refers to Mouton’s rel atively large and in some people’s opinion sometimes seemingly arbitrary production. Mouton, setting the trend in the 1950s and 1960s in the area of Slavistics and linguistics, could not protect itself from competition. Despite many publications, the publishing company lost its hold on the market in the beginning of the 1970s. Authors did not automatically come to The Hague anymore. Dim van den Oever’s letter of August 10,1973 is an indi cation that things were not going well anymore. In the letter he proposes to