Editura Ion Creangă () was a publishing house based in Bucharest, Romania. Founded as a state-run company under communist rule and named after the 19th-century writer Ion Creangă, it ranked high among Romanian publishers of children's literature, fantasy literature and science fiction. Its activity resulted in many Romanian-language translations of world children's classics, among which were bestselling versions of Jules Verne's complete works and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. The company also stood at the core of a phenomenon in local book illustration, assigning contracts to recognized artists such as Sandu Florea, Val Munteanu, Lívia Rusz and Eugen Taru.
During the late years of communism, the enterprise was subject to the intervention of official censorship. In 1988, its publishing of Ana Blandiana's poems, which featured allusions to the communist system, resulted in culturally repressive measures personally ordered by President and Communist Party leader Nicolae Ceaușescu. Editura Ion Creangă survived the 1989 Revolution, but was no longer able to compete with rival companies. It effectively ceased its activity during 2003.
History Beginnings and consolidation Founded in 1969, the publishing house established its reputation during the following two decades. Among its early employees were poet Gheorghe Zarafu, who presided over the enterprise for a while in the 1970s, Raluca Anamaria Vida, "L'Île mystérieuse - Insula misterioasă comme paradigme du phénomene retraductif roumain dans le cas de Jules Verne", in Caietele Echinox, Vol. 9, 2005, at the Babeș-Bolyai University's Center for Imagination Studies and writer Tiberiu Utan, who was himself manager of the group in the same decade. György Györfi-Deák, "Cu ochii copiilor, pentru bucuria lor" , in Caiete Silvane , June 2009 Writer and translator Adrian Solomon argued that, "with a few obnoxious exceptions", Editura Ion Creangă mostly published works which generally avoided or went beyond the propaganda characteristics found in Eastern Bloc literature aimed at adults.Adrian Solomon, "The Truth About Romania's Children", in the Romanian Cultural Institute's Plural Magazine , Nr. 30/2007 According to his assessment, while some of the books issued preferred for publishing aimed at attacking "bourgeois" society, even they were ambiguous and may not have contributed to indoctrination beyond the facade aspects.
From early on, the publishing house became an important venue for the Romanian school of book illustration. According to visual artist and journalist Cristiana Radu, the company stood for a "richer and more colorful" tradition of visual art for children, which "paradoxically" thrived under the communist period. Cristina Radu, "Ilustrația de carte. Un domeniu minor?", in Ziarul Financiar, February 27, 2009 In her assessment: "Perhaps also because reality was grayer and more deprived of visual stimuli, the books themselves worked as aesthetic markers. The books which have lit my childhood often crossed the borders, were taken into consideration by foreign editors, reaching countries such as France. During those years, Romania was the country of its area with the richest tradition in this field." Writing in 2007, Arina Stoenescu, herself an illustrator, recalled the contributions of Rusz, Munteanu and Taru as a defining element of her own childhood reading experience.Arina Stoenescu, "All Those Images", in the Romanian Cultural Institute's Plural Magazine , Nr. 30/2007 She argued: "The logotype of Ion Creangă Publishing House became a well known symbol, the distinguishing mark of many books with excellent pictures."
Enlisted by Utan, Rusz contributed drawings to reprints of classical works for children in Romanian literature, such as Nicolae Constantin Batzaria's Povești de aur ("Golden Stories") and Creangă's collected fairy tales and Childhood Memories. The latter edition is deemed "legendary" by author György Györfi-Deák. After 1971, the company also issued Caseta cu bucurii ("A Caseful of Joys" or "My Bedtime Library"), the main works for children by Emil Gârleanu, with illustrations by Ileana Ceaușu-Pandele.Emil Gârleanu. Bibliografie, p.15-16, 19, 20
Some projects of the period recovered the legacy of Romanian Surrealism. One notable Editura Ion Creangă edition was Iordan Chimet's Cele 12 luni ale visului. O antologie a inocenței ("The 12 Months of Dreaming. An Anthology of Innocence"), noted for revisiting the Surrealists' visual vocabulary and for subverting the official communist take on culture. Marina Debattista, "Subversiunea inocenței" , in România Literară, Nr. 22/2007 Editura Ion Creangă also published, in 1976, O ureche de dulceață și-o ureche de pelin ("An Ear of Jam and an Ear of Wine") by Ion Caraion, verse in which the author depicted allegorically the "personal hell" of his life during and after communist labor camps.Nicholas Catanoy, "Romanian: Ion Caraion, O ureche de dulceață și-o ureche de pelin", in Books Abroad, Vol. 50, Issue 4, Autumn 1976, p. 863 In 1979, another acclaimed edition reissued Apolodor the Penguin by 1940s Surrealist Gellu Naum, with drawings by Dan Stanciu. Simona Vasilache, "E corul de Crăciun" , in România Literară, Nr. 51-52/2008
In addition to encouraging artistic expression in regular book illustration, Editura Ion Creangă played a part in promoting Romanian comic book authors. Among them was Sandu Florea, known for his work in science fiction comics, and who allegedly became the first local comics author to make a living exclusively from his art. Petrina Calabalic, "Cartoon Man" , in Bănățeanul, December 6, 2004 In 1974, Ion Creangă also published Mircea Possa's Titilică, băiat fără frică ("Titilică, a Fearless Boy"), which some regard as one of the best Romanian comic books in its generation. Dragoș Cojocaru, "Brigada Desenatorilor pune publicul în alertă", in Ziarul de Iași, February 2, 2010
Translation projects A significant portion of the group's activities was dedicated to translations from foreign literature, some of which marked important moments in local editorial history. Such milestones included several editions of Leon Levițchi's translation from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver, called "without doubt the best of all [Romanian Gulliver editions] so far" by scholar Mihaela Mudure,Mihaela Mudure, "From the Infantile to the Subversive: Swift's Romanian Adventures", in Hermann J. Real (ed.), The Reception of Jonathan Swift in Europe, Continuum International Publishing Group, New York City, 2005, p.254. as well as Wilhelm Hauff's Märchen (Basme, illustrated by Rusz) and, in a "richly illustrated edition" of 1978, J. M. Barrie's Peter and Wendy (translators Ovidiu Constantinescu and Andrei Bantaș). Diana Soare, "Povești de adormit părinții. Finding Neverland", in Polirom's Suplimentul de Cultură, Nr. 105 Also noted were its luxury edition of Gargantua and Pantagruel, issued in collaboration with the Sibiu typography Arta Grafică, Mircea Vasilescu, "De la Rabelais la McLuhan", in Adevărul Literar și Artistic, July 22, 2011 and a 1978 version of Ugo Scotti Berni's La promessa sposa di Pinocchio. Diana Soare, "Povești de adormit părinții. A fost odată...", in Polirom's Suplimentul de Cultură, Nr. 157 The company also ran a special paperback series, Povești nemuritoare ("Immortal Tales"), which, in addition to Romanian folklore, introduced the public to samples of foreign legends, including Turkish ones.Luminița Munteanu, Literary Translations – Turkish Literature into Romanian (Next Page Foundation bibliography), p.1; retrieved August 14, 2011 In cooperation with Raduga Publishing House, Editura Ion Creangă also published the Neznaika (Habarnam) series by Soviet author Nikolay Nosov (1986). Constantin Vică, "Note, site-uri, ruși", in Dilemateca, July 2010
A notable series inaugurated by the company was the Jules Verne "yellow covers" reader, published as a set of 40 volumes bound in boards and illustrated with copies of the original French lithographs. As noted by Zarafu, management decided in favor of the oldest illustrations only because their copyright had expired. Corneliu Apetroaiei, "Eternul Jules Verne" , in Clujeanul, April 12, 2005 The Verne books were all bestsellers by Romanian standards, reportedly selling on average some 200,000 copies per issue.
Among these volumes, linguist Raluca Anamaria Vida chose as a study case Insula misterioasă ("The Mysterious Island"), translated by Veronica and Ion Mihăileanu. Contrasting it to previous translations from the 1950s, Vida argued that the Mihăileanus' work was better suited to the original text. She also analyzed the relative liberalization that had occurred in the meantime, noting that the new version was more accepting of Verne's references to religion, and lacked the "ridiculous footnotes" which encouraged the reader to interpret the text from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. Also in the "yellow covers" series was Vladimir Colin's translation of Carpathian Castle, a book set in Transylvania and having ethnic Romanians among its protagonists. Colin's rendition, in part a retranslation, parted with other Romanian versions. These had noted Verne's use of obscure words to designate places and names as his approximate renditions of Romanian, and had sought to reconstruct them into readable Romanian; instead, Colin preferred to observe the original spelling throughout. Richard Wagner, "Arcul Carpatic. Topos, logo, ideolegmă" , in Revista 22, Nr. 867, October 2006
In 1975, Editura Ion Creangă also published the first Romanian version of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, translated from English by Catinca Ralea, and carrying the title O poveste cu un hobbit ("A Story with a Hobbit"). According to journalist Adina Popescu, Ralea's text was "excellent", and the volume itself stood among "the fundamental books of the last generation to have lived its childhood during communism." Adina Popescu, , in Dilema Veche, Vol. III, Nr. 115, April 2006 O poveste cu un hobbit featured original illustrations by Rusz, who relied exclusively on her imagination for depicting the main characters, as the lack of Tolkien editions in Romania made it impossible for her to find other points of visual reference. Her contribution has nevertheless earned her an international profile among Tolkien illustrators.
In additions to adaptations into Romanian, Editura Ion Creangă was noted for a state-assigned translation program into minority languages, specifically Hungarian (for Hungarian-Romanians) and German (for German-Romanians). Gabriela Adameșteanu, "Promovarea culturii costă bani, bani și iarăși bani!" (interview with Jenö Farkas) , in Revista 22, Nr. 880, January 2007George Ciorănescu and P. M., "Official Romanian Documentary Material on Minority Affairs", Radio Free Europe Research, April 19, 1978, at the Blinken Open Society Archives; retrieved September 8, 2021 Boglárka Daróczi, "Literatura germană pentru copii aparută în România între 1944-1989 - O bibliografie" , in Carmen Crișan, István Király V., Cristina Popa, Viorica Sâncrăian, Raluca Soare (eds.), Hermeneutica Bibliothecaria. Antologie Philobiblion (III), Presa Universitară Clujeană, Lucian Blaga Central University Library, Cluj-Napoca, 2007 [n .p.] Ion Creangă, Kriterion, Albatros, Facla publishing houses were especially active in fulfilling the growing need for German-language books, in particular by presenting special awards to German authors and translators. These activities also incorporated a political aspect: a 1975 official report on cultural policies, which listed Ion Creangă alongside Editura Dacia and Kriterion as the year's most significant contributors to the program, explained the role it had in the "communist education of readers".