Navigating publishing in the 1930s: Gwenda David translator, reader and agent

This chapter focuses on Gwenda David’s activity in publishing within the British literary field of the 1930s. Born on 2 April 1905 into a business East End Jewish family, Katya Gwenda Zeidman changed her surname to David and graduated in Journalism from King’s College, London. She worked as a professional reader from the early 1930s assessing manuscripts for British publishers (Allen Unwin) and literary agents (Curtis Brown). In 1937 she began work for the Viking Press of New York, scouting British authors and acting as the press’ representative with British publishers. During the 1930s, she was also active as a translator from Italian, German and Russian with her husband, Eric Mosbacher (1903-1998). Thanks to her knowledge of foreign languages, in 1940 she became the first woman sub-editor at the BBC monitoring station, first in Wood Norton and then at Caversham. Her job consisted of editing texts produced by a team of anti-Nazi refugees in charge of translating German propaganda into English. After the war, she resumed her activity for Viking, for whom she secured influential British and Irish authors, most notably Iris Murdoch. She died in London on 20 March 2002.