Industry | Bookselling, publishing |
---|---|
Founded | 1778 |
Founder | John Deighton |
Headquarters | |
Number of locations | 1 |
Deighton, Bell, & Company was a British firm of booksellers and publishers located in Cambridge, England. [1] It enjoyed a long and close association with the University of Cambridge. [2] In 1978 it celebrated two centuries in the book business [3] and, along with two other booksellers Heffers and Bowes & Bowes, the firm contributed to "making Cambridge a prestigious centre of bookselling". [4]
The firm was founded in 1778 by John Deighton (1748-1828), a master bookbinder, and was located in "narrow, early eighteenth-century premises" [1] at the corner of Green and Trinity Streets, Cambridge, which would be the location of the firm for its entire existence.
John Deighton became a major publisher for Cambridge University and a binder for that university's library. [2] He also gained a reputation as a book retailer with a "remarkable ability to supply foreign books, even in time of war", [5] which was particularly important to the university's library in that era before the introduction of the Uniform Penny Post throughout the United Kingdom and before the coming of the railways to all parts of the country.
In the years 1813-1827 the firm was operated as a partnership between the founder and his two sons, John Deighton the younger (1791-1854) and Joseph Jonathan Deighton (1792-1848), trading as John Deighton & Sons. Following the elder John Deighton's retirement in 1827, the firm traded as J. & J. J. Deighton. [6] Beginning in 1848, following Joseph's death, the firm traded as J. Deighton.
In 1854 the firm was acquired by the educational publisher George Bell of George Bell & Sons, following which it became known as Deighton, Bell, and Company. [7] [8]
In 1876 it was publishing, jointly with George Bell & Sons and Whittaker & Co., a number of textbook series for the secondary school and university markets. [9]
During the twentieth century the firm concentrated mainly on bookselling of both new and secondhand books. While its publishing activities had mostly ceased, in 1932 the firm published and distributed F. R. Leavis's literary quarterly Scrutiny . From 1967 the firm devoted itself exclusively to antiquarian bookselling. [2] In 1987 Deighton, Bell, and Co. was acquired by Heffers, which was in turn taken over by the academic book retailer and library supply service, Blackwell's. [4] [10]
Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books by decree in 1586, it is the second oldest university press after Cambridge University Press.
Blackwell UK, also known as Blackwell's and Blackwell Group, is a British academic book retailer and library supply service owned by Waterstones. It was founded in 1879 by Benjamin Henry Blackwell, after whom the chain is named, on Broad Street, Oxford. The brand now has a chain of 18 shops, and an accounts and library supply service. It employs around 1000 staff in its divisions.
Joseph Whitaker was a publisher who founded Whitaker's Almanack.
James Thin Ltd was a British bookshop chain, founded by James Thin in 1848. It operated for 154 years, during which time it was run by five generations of the Thin family. Starting from a single shop in Edinburgh, it grew to a national concern with 35 branches throughout Scotland and England. In 2002, following a period of rapid expansion, it went into voluntary administration, after which most of its shops were purchased by other companies in the book trade.
George Bell & Sons was a book publishing house located in London, United Kingdom, from 1839 to 1986.
The Bridgewater Treatises (1833–36) are a series of eight works that were written by leading scientific figures appointed by the President of the Royal Society in fulfilment of a bequest of £8000, made by Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater, for a work on "the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation." Despite being voluminous and costly, the series was very widely read and discussed, becoming one of the most important contributions to the Victorian literature on the relationship between religion and science. They made such an impact that Charles Darwin began On the Origin of Species with a quotation from the Bridgewater Treatise of William Whewell.
The antiquarian book trade in the United States is an aspect of book collecting and publishing. The term antiquarian, in general, refers to antiquities and collectible items usually considered old and rare, usually in reference to books, but is not limited to books. The word antiquarian could also be used to describe a person who collects rare books or other antique items.
Sampson Low was a bookseller and publisher in London in the 19th century.
Jonathan Leavitt was a bookbinder who later co-founded the New York City publishing firm of Leavitt & Trow, one of the nation's first publishing houses. Leavitt was also co-founder of another early New York publishing house with his brother-in-law Daniel Appleton. George Palmer Putnam, who went on to found a New York publishing dynasty, received his first job from Leavitt. Eventually Jonathan Leavitt went into business on his own, and after his death the firm was run by his son George Ayres Leavitt.
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Founded in 1892, The Bibliographical Society is the senior learned society dealing with the study of the book and its history in the United Kingdom.
David Nutt was a British book publisher and bookseller.
Alexander Donaldson was a Scottish bookseller, publisher, and printer. Donaldson was the founding publisher of the weekly newspaper, the Edinburgh Advertiser. He was also known for selling cheap copies of books after their copyright had expired in disregard to London booksellers' opinions on literary property.
William Hilliard (1778–1836) was a publisher and bookseller in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts in the early 19th-century. He worked with several business partners through the years, including Jacob Abbot Cummings, James Brown, and Charles C. Little. President Thomas Jefferson selected his firm to supply approximately 7,000 volumes on numerous topics in 1825-1826, to create the University of Virginia Library.
George Byrom Whittaker (1793–1847) was an English bookseller and publisher.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Cambridge, England.
As of 2018, several firms in the United States rank among the world's biggest publishers of books in terms of revenue: Cengage Learning, HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill Education, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, and Wiley.
Desmond Zwemmer was a British publisher and bookseller. For many years he ran the publishing firm A. Zwemmer Ltd. which published award-winning "books about specialised areas of the arts". He also worked with the London-based arts bookshop, A. Zwemmer, which has been variously praised by Sir Kenneth Clark who called it a "source of refreshment", by Henry Moore and by Alfred H. Barr Jr.
The selling of books dates back to ancient times. The founding of libraries in c.300 BC stimulated the energies of the Athenian booksellers. In Rome, toward the end of the republic, it became the fashion to have a library, and Roman booksellers carried on a flourishing trade.
St. Paul's Bibliographies was a publishing company founded by Robert S. Cross (1925-2011) in 1979 in Winchester, England that specialized in bibliographical works and book history more generally. In the 1980s, the firm co-published in the US with Omnigraphics of Detroit. In 1992 the firm began co-publishing with Oak Knoll Press, and in 1993 Oak Knoll took over US distribution. In 1997 St. Paul's Bibliographies was purchased by Oak Knoll Press who continued many of its series under its own publishing imprint. Oak Knoll continued to issue publications under the St. Paul's Bibliographies imprint until 2015.