The dossier containing the reader’s reports about Margaret Atwood’s novels and collections of poetry was probably opened in the publishing house in 1974. On the cover, her surname is spelt with two T-s, with one T crossed out later, and corrected in blue ink. The dossier is not slim. It contains twenty-two documents, some in several copies, typed on thin duplicate carbon paper. The dates of the reports indicate that the name of the Canadian author, unknown at the time, came up again and again, every two or three years after 1974 in connection with a new title. Despite the predominantly positive reviews, it was the publisher’s final decision that the books would not be translated. According to the bibliographical data, the number of translated Atwood titles increased slightly after the political change, which tendency is typical of the Central European region, not only of Hungary. According to the translation database of the Central European Association for Canadian Studies (CEACS), data from Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Czechoslovakia – later the Czech Republic and Slovakia –, Romania, and Bulgaria show a similar tendency, that is, Atwood’s books started to be published in the region only after 1990, after the fall of Communism (see Figure 1).

The reader’s reports show that although not a single book by Atwood appeared in Hungarian translation before 1984, Európa Publishing House – which was officially commissioned by the Communist Party in 1957 to publish world literature – followed Atwood’s literary work closely, both her prose and poetry, reviewing it often shortly after the original English language publication. Every two or three years, new reports were requested about Atwood’s books. At least two, sometimes three or four opinions were submitted to the publisher. The following volumes have been considered for publication by Európa, with the date of the English-language original in parenthesis: in 1974 and 1981 Surfacing (1972); in 1977 You Are Happy (1974); in 1977, 1981 and 1982 The Edible Woman (1969); in 1980, 1981, and 1982 Life Before Man (1979); in 1982 Bodily Harm (1981); in 1984 Bluebeard’s Egg (1983); in 1986 Dancing Girls (1977); in 1987 and 1988 The Handmaid’s Tale (1985); and in 1990 Cat’s Eye (1988). But what purpose did these reader’s reports serve in the Communist era?

It is widely known that after 1946, the key actors in the nationalization of literature in Hungary were, among others, the publishers (Czigány, 1990: 30–44). Although there was no official censorship, translation and editing were done often by silenced writers and self-censorship was expected and present at all levels of publishing (Haraszti, 1986; Czigányik, 2010: 223–234; Schandl, 2011: 263–270). From 1957, the General Directorate of Publishing (Kiadói Főigazgatóság), functioning under the Ministry of Culture, coordinated publishing in line with the political will dictated by the institutions of foreign and domestic policy, according to the principle of the “three Ps”2 (to use Kontler’s terms, see Kontler, 1999: 445), that is, cultural products were either promoted, or permitted, or prohibited (Czigány, 1990; Bart, 2000). Some aspects of this mechanism – one ‘P’ or the other – have been researched by literary historians in publications, pointing out either the ruthlessness of the system (Domokos, 1996) or the fact that some “sensitive” books or theater plays could still be made public, although with a delay (Takács, 2015: 137). As Scholz referencing Bart (2000: 63–65) also points out, the delay in publishing was intentional to weaken the effect of the given piece. “Foreign trends could be followed as long as they were kept at a certain temporal distance and were recontextualized according to principles in place at the time” (Scholz, 2009: 208).

The economic reform introduced in 1968 also impacted the sphere of culture. The reform “communicated with the actors of culture through regulations, prices, deductions, incentives, as well as premium conditions. However, it did not bring about a change in the general principles of cultural policy nor promise or induce the reform in this field” (ibid. 138).3 Despite the subsidies given by the state in the early 1970s, publishers sought to produce books that were of interest and financially profitable to compensate for the increasing costs of publishing, while ideological control persisted up to the change of regime (Czigányik, 2011). The introduction of cultural contribution, also known as “trash tax”, was in principle levied on the works depicting eroticism and violence, but in practice on all publications of popular genres (Sohár, 1999: 74). It was far from clear, however, what the system meant by “violence” and “eroticism” and how the inspectors would categorize a work, so practically it could fall into either the permitted, the prohibited or rarely the promoted categories. Sohár points out that from 1968 on, there was a growing interest in popular genres, including translated pulp fiction, crime stories and science fiction (Sohár, 2022). This increasing leniency and “thawing” during the Kádár era can also be seen in the reader’s reports that assessed the marketability as well as the financial success of the books to be translated and were discussed in the publishers’ planning committees (Czigányik, 2011: 225).

The reader’s reports were one of the instruments of control built into the publishing process4 that described the books considered for publishing from a professional and an ideological point of view. The publishers asked both in-house and external reviewers with foreign language skills to review world literature. It was an activity that the publisher paid for. The 2–5 page long typed expert opinions had a set form and were often remarkable short essays or literary analyses, although the literary value alone was not a decisive factor in the publisher’s decision (Czigányik, 2013: 17). Based on personal experiences and reader’s reports, Mátyás Domokos, an editor and in-house reviewer of Szépirodalmi Publishing House between 1953 and 1991, describes the principles of extending an artificial, Socialist Realist control over Hungarian literature and the introduction of a literary policy controlled by state bureaucracy in his book Leletmentés [Rescuing Artifacts]. Through the stories of specific manuscripts, he describes the impossible struggle that the editorial staff had against an “invisible” censorship in order to publish certain pieces of literature, in a way that is true to the original text, not altered, printed in an appropriate edition and number of copies. Quoting writer Lajos Grendel, Domokos explains that the paradox of the reviewers’ work was that “these professionals could be absolutely right but had hardly any power or influence; their job was to take a stand, but it was for others to decide whether their stand was correct or not” (Domokos, 1996: 8). Regarding Hungarian poet, Pilinszky’s volume of poetry, Domokos recalls that

Atwood’s English language texts were reviewed by seventeen people, twelve women and five men. The reviewers’ gender does not influence, however, whether they supported the publishing of the reviewed book. Among the five male reviewers, only one gave a negative review, that of Surfacing in 1974, which was nevertheless selected for translation by the publisher. Four out of twelve female reviewers did not recommend a particular Atwood text to be published in Hungarian at all. The publisher rarely, only on three occasions asked the same person for their opinion. In Atwood’s case, due to the large number of in-house and external reviewers involved, a wide variety of professional perspectives – ranging from writers, poets, translators, editors, literary historians, scholars, journalists – is present in the initial reception of Atwood. A total of six reports out of the twenty-two did not recommend the reviewed book for translation, three recommended a selection of the reviewed short stories, and thirteen gave a positive review and tried to push Atwood’s text through the publisher’s screening process between 1974 and 1990.

Next, I will discuss Atwood’s reader’s reports thematically, tracing recurring topics and references to Canadian literature. The documents have been carefully anonymized for research purposes. The following themes have been found: decision about the title, publishing translated poetry, the practice of multiple reviewing, references to social classes, paratexts, the reputation of international success, and Canadian literature.