Bourne's 'Black In The British Frame' Out Of Print — SkimNews
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- Stephen Bourne's 'Black in the British Frame,' first published in 1998 by Cassell and updated in 2001, has gone out of print, with Bloomsbury Publishing returning the rights to the author after inheriting it through a merger with Continuum.
- Bloomsbury would not reissue the book without Bourne updating it to cover the post-2001 digital and video era; he refused, saying the rewrite 'would dilute the original book' and calling the experience 'horrible.'
- The book profiles early Black British screen pioneers from 1896 to 2001, including Paul Robeson, Carmen Munroe, Earl Cameron, Norman Beaton, and 'lost' silent-era figure Ernest Trimingham.
- Bourne has since approached academic presses about reissuing the title, but they have either declined or also demanded an update, and he has been unable to secure literary representation despite publishing for over 30 years.
- Bourne says agents have told him 'there's no market for Black British books in this country,' and that Bloomsbury reverted rights on five of his books—four of them about Black cinema.
- The book remains on UK university and school reading lists, but Bourne says new and second-hand copies are 'almost impossible to find,' with the rights now sitting with him at his South London home.
Why it matters: A foundational text used on UK university reading lists—covering figures from 1896 to 2001 like Paul Robeson and Carmen Munroe—has been allowed to slip out of circulation because the publisher required an update the author deemed would compromise the original work, and the wider industry has shown no urgency to preserve it. The practical cost falls on students, scholars, and general readers who now have no way to buy the book documenting careers a historically white-dominated British film and publishing establishment has repeatedly failed to keep in print.
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