George Byrom Whittaker (1793–1847) was an English bookseller and publisher.
Born at Southampton in March 1793, he was the son of the Rev. George Whittaker, master of the grammar school. About 1814 he became a partner of Charles Law, wholesale bookseller in Ave Maria Lane, London, a house established by W. Bidwell Law (d. 1798). Whittaker brought capital and dynamism into the business. One enterprise was the publication of a translation of Georges Cuvier's Animal Kingdom, in sixteen volumes, with many coloured plates. [1]
In 1824 he served as sheriff of London and Middlesex. He published for Frances Trollope, Colley Grattan, George Croly, and Mary Russell Mitford. The last novel of Sir Walter Scott came out with his imprint and his firm published in London all Scott's early collected editions. In conjunction with the Oxford, Cambridge and London booksellers and publishers, such Deighton, Bell, & Company and George Bell & Sons, he produced a series of Greek and Latin classics. John Payne Collier's edition of Shakespeare (1841) was issued by him. He published educational primers, including the Pinnock Catechisms series, and many other children's books, and he was a promoter of literacy with his Whittaker's Popular Library (Popular Library of Modern Authors). [2] [3]
The British publisher, Joseph Whitaker (1820–1895), who founded The Bookseller , a booktrade periodical, in 1858 and Whitaker's Almanack , a reference annual, in 1869, and published under the name J. Whitaker & Sons, was not related to George Byrom Whittaker.
Whittaker published using a number of imprints: [4]
He died at Kensington on 13 December 1847.
Richard Gilbert, founder of the printing firm of Gilbert & Rivington, married Whittaker's only sister; their son Robert succeeded to his uncle's property and business. The firm was incorporated as Gilbert and Rivington Ltd. in 1881, was still operating in the early twentieth century until it dissolved some time before 1916. [5]
Charles Rivington was a British publisher.
Longman, also known as Pearson Longman, is a publishing company founded in London, England, in 1724 and is owned by Pearson PLC.
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.
Joseph Whitaker was a publisher who founded Whitaker's Almanack.
George Routledge was a British book publisher and the founder of the publishing house Routledge.
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George Bell & Sons was a book publishing house located in London, United Kingdom, from 1839 to 1986.
The Cheap Repository Tracts consisted of more than two hundred moral, religious and occasionally political tracts issued in a number of series between March 1795 and 1817, and subsequently re-issued in various collected editions until the 1830s. They were devised by Hannah More and intended for sale or distribution to literate poor people, as an alternative to what she regarded as the immoral traditional broadside ballad and chapbook publications. The tracts proved to be enormously successful with more than two million copies sold or distributed during the first year of the scheme.
Sampson Low was a bookseller and publisher in London in the 19th century.
Cyrus Redding (1785–1870) was a British journalist and wine writer.
St George the Martyr Holborn is an Anglican church located at the south end of Queen Square, Holborn, in the London Borough of Camden. It is dedicated to Saint George, and was originally so-called to distinguish it from the later nearby church of St. George's Bloomsbury, with which it shared a burial ground. While the historical name remains its formal designation, it is today known simply as St George's Holborn.
The Bookseller is a British magazine reporting news on the publishing industry. Philip Jones is editor-in-chief of the weekly print edition of the magazine and the website. The magazine is home to the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for Oddest Title of the Year, a humorous award given annually to the book with the oddest title. The award is organised by The Bookseller's diarist, Horace Bent, and had been administered in recent years by the former deputy editor, Joel Rickett, and former charts editor, Philip Stone. We Love This Book is its quarterly sister consumer website and email newsletter.
William Collins, Sons & Co., often referred to as Collins, was a Scottish printing and publishing company founded by a Presbyterian schoolmaster, William Collins, in Glasgow in 1819, in partnership with Charles Chalmers, the younger brother of Thomas Chalmers, the minister of Tron Church in Glasgow.
Rivington, or Rivington's, also called Rivington & Co., was a London-based publishing company founded by Charles Rivington (1688–1742), originally from Derbyshire, and continued by his sons and grandsons.
Richard Gilbert (1794–1852) was an English printer and compiler of reference works.
Byrom is a toponymic surname, a variant spelling of Byron, derived from Byram, North Yorkshire. Notable people with the surname include:
George Whittaker may refer to:
George Robinson was an English bookseller and publisher working in London.
David Haddon Whitaker was a British book publisher. A direct descendant of Joseph Whitaker, he joined the family firm, J. Whitaker & Sons, in 1956. Whitaker became involved with the development of Standard Book Numbers, the precursor to the ISBN, in the 1960s. Whitaker's firm was well placed to drive the standard as it published records of all books published in the United Kingdom. The SBN was expanded internationally from 1968 and Whitaker, who is sometimes known as "the father of the ISBN", played a key role in this. He chaired the first International Organization for Standardization (ISO) working group on the ISBN and helped draft ISO standard 2108.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : "Whittaker, George Byrom". Dictionary of National Biography . London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.