 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(October 2011) |
| Founded | 1951 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Lord Kemsley |
| Headquarters | United Kingdom |
| Products | Books |
The Queen Anne Press (logo stylized QAP) is a small publisher (originally a private press).
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(October 2011) |
| Founded | 1951 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Lord Kemsley |
| Headquarters | United Kingdom |
| Products | Books |
The Queen Anne Press (logo stylized QAP) is a small publisher (originally a private press).
It was created in 1951 by Lord Kemsley, proprietor of The Sunday Times , to publish the works of contemporary authors. In 1952, as a wedding present to his then Foreign Editor, Kemsley made Ian Fleming its managing director. [1] The press began by concentrating on limited editions. Lycett states that under Fleming's management, the company was modelled on the Black Sun Press, [2] run by the poet Harry Crosby, nephew of financier J. P. Morgan, although it owed more to Kemsley's other private press, the Dropmore Press, with which it shared printing equipment, and books from the two were very alike in the period between 1951 and 1955. [3]
Director Ann Fleming, the socialite wife of Ian Fleming (and a long-time correspondent of Evelyn Waugh [4] ), requested support for the press from her literary friends, which included Noël Coward, Nancy Mitford and Stephen Spender. She asked Waugh in particular "please write me ten thousand words on some saint with interesting habits". [5] Waugh proposed to collect a few robust reviews under the title Offensive Matter. [6] This was shelved, however, in favour of an illustrated book The Holy Places, which had previously only been published in periodical form. The book, with wood-engravings by Reynolds Stone (a protégé of John Betjeman, according to Waugh, who did not like the book nor its illustrations), [7] was ready in time for Christmas, 1952.
In the early years, the press also published works by other highly respected authors including travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor and the essayist Cyril Connolly, whose book The Missing Diplomats, a scoop on the Cambridge Spy Ring, [8] was a popular work, prompting Ann to write "business is flourishing" [9] A possible purchase of the press by Ian and Ann Fleming was considered in 1954-5, but although a price was discussed it appears the sale never came to fruition. [10] [1] In 1955 or 1956 the printing equipment was sold, and the Queen Anne Press became a publishing imprint only. Fleming remained at the helm until his death in 1964, and the imprint was subsequently absorbed by the publishing interests of Robert Maxwell, becoming an imprint specialising in sporting books. In 2007 the Queen Anne Press was acquired by Ian Fleming's literary estate.
Queen Anne Press also published the journal The Book Collector (formerly Book Handbook), whose editorial board consisted of bibliophiles Michael Sadleir, John Hayward, John Carter, Percy Muir and Ian Fleming. [11] The Queen Anne Press has also published the sporting annuals Wisden Cricketers' Almanack , Rothmans Football Yearbook and Rothmans Snooker Yearbook .
Inspired by the centenary of Ian Fleming in 2008, the Queen Anne Press published a limited edition of his complete works, including a new collection entitled Talk of the Devil; a posthumous volume of rarely seen material, some of it unpublished; [12] the title was taken from a list that Fleming kept in his notebook. Further limited editions have been published under the Queen Anne Press imprint, including Ian Fleming: The Bibliography (2012) by Jon Gilbert, winner of the 16th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography. [13]
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British writer, best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst, and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945), and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour (1952–1961). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century.
Robert Byron was an English travel writer, best known for his travelogue The Road to Oxiana. He was also a noted writer, art critic and historian.
Black Mischief was Evelyn Waugh's third novel, published in 1932. Expanded from a novella, 'Seth', the novel chronicles the efforts of the British-educated Emperor Seth, assisted by a fellow Oxford graduate, Basil Seal, to modernise his Empire, the fictional African island of Azania, located in the Indian Ocean off the eastern coast of Africa.
James Gomer Berry, 1st Viscount Kemsley, GBE was a Welsh colliery owner and newspaper publisher.
Nigel Nicolson was an English writer, publisher and politician.
Anne Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon was an English memoirist and the second wife of Anthony Eden, who served as British prime minister from 1955 to 1957. She married Eden in 1952, becoming Lady Eden in 1954 when he was made a Knight of the Garter, before becoming Countess of Avon in 1961 when her husband was created Earl of Avon. She was also Winston Churchill's niece. In 2007, at 87, she released her memoir subtitled From Churchill to Eden.
The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is a novel by the British writer Evelyn Waugh, first published in July 1957. It is Waugh's penultimate full-length work of fiction, which the author called his "mad book"—a largely autobiographical account of a period of hallucinations caused by bromide intoxication that he experienced in the early months of 1954, recounted through his protagonist Gilbert Pinfold.
John Waynflete Carter was an English writer, diplomat, bibliographer, book-collector, antiquarian bookseller and vice-president of the Bibliographical Society of London. He was the great-grandson of Canon T. T. Carter.
Hugo Richard Charteris, 11th Earl of Wemyss and 7th Earl of March DL, styled Lord Elcho from 1883 to 1914, was a British Conservative politician.
Andrew Michael Duncan Lycett FRSL is an English biographer and journalist.
The Dropmore Press was a British private press founded in 1945 by the newspaper-owner Gomer Berry, 1st Viscount Kemsley.
Adrian Harrington is a notable antiquarian bookseller, a Past President of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association (ABA), 2001–2003, and a recent Past President of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB). He has exhibited at major international book fairs in America, Canada, Hong Kong, Britain and Ireland, and between 2000 and 2010 Harrington was the chairman of Britain's leading rare book event, the summer ABA Book Fair at Olympia, London. During his tenure, it was host to opening speakers including authors Jacqueline Wilson, Lynda La Plante, Joanna Lumley, Bob Geldof, Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Marr, Barry Humphries, Frederick Forsyth and former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion. Harrington has been a regular consultant on rare books for Millers Price Guide, and has been interviewed on book-related matters by the BBC, and Australian Television
The Temple at Thatch was an unpublished novel by the British author Evelyn Waugh, his first adult attempt at full-length fiction. He began writing it in 1924 at the end of his final year as an undergraduate at Hertford College, Oxford, and continued to work on it intermittently in the following 12 months. After his friend Harold Acton commented unfavourably on the draft in June 1925, Waugh burned the manuscript. In a fit of despondency from this and other personal disappointments he began a suicide attempt before experiencing what he termed "a sharp return to good sense".
Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell was a British historian and academic who served as dean and later principal of Hertford College, Oxford. His field of expertise was modern European history, his most notable work being A History of the Great War, 1914–18. He is mainly remembered, however, for the vendetta pursued against him by the novelist Evelyn Waugh, in which Waugh showed his distaste for his former tutor by repeatedly using the name "Cruttwell" in his early novels and stories to depict a sequence of unsavoury or ridiculous characters. The prolonged minor humiliation thus inflicted may have contributed to Cruttwell's eventual mental breakdown.
Jon Gilbert is an English bibliophile, historian and the official bibliographer of Ian Fleming, creator of the fictional character James Bond. He is also an authority on J. K. Rowling first editions. He was educated at Caterham School and Roehampton Institute London. According to Fleming-family publisher Queen Anne Press, Gilbert is perhaps the foremost expert on the works of Ian Fleming and the literary history of James Bond. Through Adrian Harrington booksellers, he has become an internationally renowned dealer in rare Fleming material, and acts as a consultant to the US registered charity, The Ian Fleming Foundation. Ian Fleming: The Bibliography, which was published in October 2012, is the result of both a career immersed in the writings of Ian Fleming, and four years intensive research following Fleming’s centenary year in 2008. The book was the winner of the 16th ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography, awarded in 2014. Gilbert has appeared on radio and television discussing his subject, and in various Bond-related publications including 007 Magazine, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and MI6 Confidential. In May 2017, Gilbert gave the lecture Ian Fleming: The Author as Collector at the University of London. In July 2021, Gilbert moderated the specialist webinar 007: The Transatlantic Appeal of James Bond.
The Narcissus washstand is a piece of painted furniture made by the Victorian architect and designer William Burges in 1867. It was originally made for Burges's set of rooms at Buckingham Street and subsequently moved to his bedroom at The Tower House, the house he designed for himself in Holland Park in London. John Betjeman, later Poet Laureate and a leading champion of the art and architecture of the Victorian Gothic Revival, was left the remaining lease on the Tower House, including some of the furniture, by E. R. B. Graham in 1961. He gave the washstand, which he found in a second-hand shop in Lincoln, to the novelist Evelyn Waugh who featured it in his 1957 novel, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, mirroring a real-life incident when Waugh, in the grip of bromide poisoning, became convinced that an ornamental tap was missing from the washstand.
Frances Laura Spencer-Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, was a British noblewoman and socialite. She was variously Viscountess Long, Countess of Dudley and became Duchess of Marlborough upon her fourth marriage, to John Spencer-Churchill, 10th Duke of Marlborough. She was the sister of novelist Hugo Charteris and Ann Charteris, as well as the granddaughter of Hugo Charteris, 11th Earl of Wemyss. Her third husband, Michael Temple Canfield, was the former husband of Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. During World War II, she served as an auxiliary nurse.
Ann Geraldine Mary Fleming, previously known as Lady O'Neill and Viscountess Rothermere, was a British socialite. She married firstly Lord O'Neill, secondly Lord Rothermere, and finally the writer Ian Fleming. She also had affairs with the Labour Party politicians Hugh Gaitskell and Roy Jenkins.
Piers Court is a country house in Stinchcombe on the Cotswold Edge in Gloucestershire, England. A Grade II* listed building, in the mid-20th century the court was home to the novelist Evelyn Waugh.
