Institutions have, from a systemic point of view, a complementary function in cultural repertoire formation. This function is illustrated by the role publishers and translators played in the literary socialisation of readers between 1880 and 1940, a role they took over, partly or entirely, from educators and teachers of literature. In this period, language teaching in the Netherlands assigned a key position to Dutch literature and marginalised literature in other languages. However, the activities of publishers and translators added an international frame of reference to the mainly national repertoire imparted to the pupils. Several circumstances stimulated this cosmopolitan transformation, such as internationalism and the advancing professionalization of translation at the beginning of the twentieth century.