This series of book files predominantly relates to books published by Carcanet Press between 1979 and 1981, representing the full range of the Carcanet list at this time. The majority of the 37 volumes appeared in 1980; books published in 1979 and 1981 are represented by seven and six files respectively. There are only two files relating to volumes published earlier than this; one from 1977 and one from 1974, which only found their way into the archive at this stage. Some books documented here are also represented in the first sequence of book files in this accession, at CPA/1/2/1. Where this occurs, cross references have been supplied.
The files contain a range of editorial papers including the author's or editor's manuscript, author's proofs, collated proofs, and related papers such as correspondence and unpublished poetry manuscripts; some volumes are more fully documented than others. Peter Jones copy-edited a number of the volumes published during 1979-1981; Val Warner was responsible for copy-editing the 1974 text included in this accession (Robert Garioch's Made in Scotland anthology); and Helen Ramsbotham acted as copy-editor for one volume. Margaret Hutchinson was the principal proof-reader and collator during this period, and her work appears in many of the files listed here. It was her usual practice to produce the collated proofs by adding her own corrections to the marked author's set, meaning that in some cases authors' proofs do not have a separate catalogue entry of their own. Most of the typesetting during this period was still carried out in-house at Carcanet, and the main printers at this time were Billings.