SONG & DANCE MAN III ANNIVERSARY

Today is the seventh anniversary of the publication of Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan - two weeks before the end of the 20th Century. It was published in London, by what was then Cassell Academic, in a limited edition hardback (450 copies) and an unlimited edition paperback. There was a modest launch party at the Poetry Society's offices in London.

Very soon afterwards, the management of Cassell Academic bought themselves out of the Cassell group, to stop being swallowed up, like the rest of Cassell, by the Orion conglomerate. They teamed up with a small sort-of-academic New York publisher called Continuum and became the Continuum International Publishing Group (in theory: for the logo and most purposes, it's just "Continuum"). Reprints of the paperback of Song & Dance Man III appeared as Continuum books (twice in 2000, and then in 2001, 2002 and 2004). The book was imported into the US and officially launched there in March 2000.

The London-based editorial director was Janet Joyce; one of her last acts at Continuum, before leaving to set up her own new imprint, Equinox Publishing, was to give me an unusually generous and author-friendly contract to sign The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia to Continuum.

This was the original cover of Song & Dance Man III: