George Allen & Unwin in the UK
George Allen & Sons was established in 1871 by George Allen, with the backing of John Ruskin, [2] becoming George Allen & Co. Ltd. in 1911 when it merged with Swan Sonnenschein and then George Allen & Unwin on 4 August 1914 as a result of Stanley Unwin's purchase of a controlling interest. [3] Frank Arthur Mumby and Frances Helena Swan Stallybrass, [4] Unwin's son Rayner S. Unwin and his nephew Philip helped him to run the company, which published works by Bertrand Russell, Arthur Waley, Roald Dahl, Lancelot Hogben and Thor Heyerdahl. It became well known as J. R. R. Tolkien's publisher some time after publishing the popular children's fantasy novel The Hobbit in 1937, and its high fantasy sequel The Lord of the Rings novel in 1954–1955. Book series published by the firm in this period include the Muirhead Library of Philosophy and Unwin Books, a paperback imprint. [5]
Rayner Unwin retired at the end of 1985, and the firm was amalgamated in 1986 with Bell & Hyman to form Unwin Hyman Ltd., with Robin Hyman as chief executive. From this time "Allen & Unwin" continued only as the name of the Australian subsidiary of Unwin Hyman. Rayner Unwin returned for a while as part-time chairman of Unwin Hyman, retiring again at the end of 1988. It was over the objections of Rayner Unwin, the largest shareholder, that in 1990 Hyman sold the firm to HarperCollins. [6] [7] HarperCollins has since sold Unwin Hyman's academic book list to Routledge.
The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel by the English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book The Hobbit, but eventually developed into a much larger work. Written in stages between 1937 and 1949, The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-selling books ever written, with over 150 million copies sold.
HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British-American publishing company that is considered to be one of the "Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster. HarperCollins is headquartered in New York City and London and is a subsidiary of News Corp.
Pauline Diana Baynes was an English illustrator, author, and commercial artist. She contributed drawings and paintings to more than 200 books, mostly in the children's genre. She was the first illustrator of some of J. R. R. Tolkien's minor works, including Farmer Giles of Ham, Smith of Wootton Major, and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. She became well-known for her cover illustrations for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and for her poster map with inset illustrations, A Map of Middle-earth. She illustrated all seven volumes of C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, from the first book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Gaining a reputation as the "Narnia artist", she illustratred spinoffs like Brian Sibley's The Land of Narnia. In addition to work for other authors, including illustrating Roger Lancelyn Green's The Tales of Troy and Iona and Peter Opie's books of nursery rhymes, Baynes created some 600 illustrations for Grant Uden's A Dictionary of Chivalry, for which she won the Kate Greenaway Medal. Late in her life she began to write and illustrate her own books, with animal or Biblical themes.
Bilbo's Last Song is a poem by J. R. R. Tolkien, written as a pendant to his fantasy The Lord of the Rings. It was first published in a Dutch translation in 1973, subsequently appearing in English on posters in 1974 and as a picture-book in 1990. It was illustrated by Pauline Baynes, and set to music by Donald Swann and Stephen Oliver. The poem's copyright was owned by Tolkien's secretary, to whom he gave it in gratitude for her work for him.
Sir Stanley Unwin, KCMG was a British publisher, who founded the Allen & Unwin publishing firm.
The Bodley Head is an English book publishing imprint of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1887 by John Lane and Elkin Mathews, The Bodley Head existed as an independent entity or as part of multiple consortiums until it was acquired by Random House in 1987 alongside sister companies Jonathan Cape and Chatto & Windus. Random House used The Bodley Head as a children's book imprint until April 2008, when it was repositioned as an adult non-fiction imprint within the Vintage Books division.
Routledge is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law, and social science. The company publishes approximately 1,800 journals and 5,000 new books each year and their backlist encompasses over 140,000 titles. Routledge is claimed to be the largest global academic publisher within humanities and social sciences.
Colin Greenland is a British science fiction writer, whose first story won the second prize in a 1982 Faber & Faber competition. His best-known novel is Take Back Plenty (1990), winner of both major British science fiction awards, the 1990 British SF Association award and the 1991 Arthur C. Clarke Award, as well as being a nominee for the 1992 Philip K. Dick Award for the best original paperback published that year in the United States.
George Bell & Sons was an English book publishing house. It was based in London and existed from 1839 to 1986.
Chapman & Hall is an imprint owned by CRC Press, originally founded as a British publishing house in London in the first half of the 19th century by Edward Chapman and William Hall. Chapman & Hall were publishers for Charles Dickens, Thomas Carlyle, William Thackeray, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Anthony Trollope, Eadweard Muybridge and Evelyn Waugh.
Rayner Stephens Unwin CBE was an English publisher. He served as the chairman of the publishing firm George Allen & Unwin, which had been founded by his father Sir Stanley Unwin.
T. Fisher Unwin was the London publishing house founded by Thomas Fisher Unwin, husband of British Liberal politician Jane Cobden in 1882.
Bertie Maurice van Thal (1904–1983), known as Herbert van Thal, was a British bookseller, publisher, agent, biographer, and anthologist.
Atlantic Books is an independent British publishing house, with its headquarters in Ormond House in Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden. It is perhaps best known for publishing Aravind Adiga's debut novel The White Tiger, which received the 40th Man Booker Prize in 2008, and for its long-standing relationship with the late Christopher Hitchens.
Edward Adolf Sonnenschein was an English classical scholar and writer on Latin grammar and verse.
George Allen was an English craftsman and engraver, who became an assistant to John Ruskin and then in consequence a publisher. His name persists in publishing through the George Allen & Unwin company.
William Swan Sonnenschein, known from 1917 as William Swan Stallybrass, was a British publisher, editor and bibliographer. His publishing firm, Swan Sonnenschein, published scholarly works in the fields of philosophy and the social sciences. as well as general literature and periodicals. In 1902 he became the senior managing director of the British publishing firm George Routledge & Sons.
The Chitral Campaign: A Narrative of events in Chitral, Swat and Bajour is a book narrating the turbulent account of history in Chitral following the death of it Chief Aman ul-Mulk, the subsequent Siege of Chitral and the Chitral Expedition. The book was written by Harry Craufuird Thomson with its first edition published by Heinemann Publishers in London in 1895.
Seeley, Service was a British publishing firm. It was established in 1744 and ceased business over two centuries later, in 1979. During most of the twentieth century the "well established" Seeley, Service was second only to Longman as Britain's oldest active publishing firm. In 1886 it was described by The Publishers' Circular as having a reputation for "taste and elegance".
Tolkien's artwork was a key element of his creativity from the time when he began to write fiction. A professional philologist, J. R. R. Tolkien prepared a wide variety of materials to support his fiction, including illustrations for his Middle-earth fantasy books, facsimile artefacts, more or less "picturesque" maps, calligraphy, and sketches and paintings from life. Some of his artworks combined several of these elements.
