Parent company | Bloomsbury Publishing |
---|---|
Founded | 1962 |
Founder | John Rotheroe |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Headquarters location | London |
Publication types | Books |
Official website | www |
Shire Books are published by Bloomsbury Publishing, a book publishing company based in London, England, and formerly by Shire Publications Ltd. and Osprey Publishing. Shire offers low priced, concise non-fiction paperbacks on a wide range of subjects. Shire books cover antiques and collectables, motoring and rural history, archaeology and Egyptology, architecture, industrial history and many other topics.
Founded in 1962 by John Rotheroe, the company was for many years based in Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire. The first book published by Shire was Discovering East Suffolk, a 24-page guide to the county through a series of five motoring routes and a gazetteer of the main towns and villages. It was given away to visitors via coach operators, local churches and tourist information points. The book was successful and when it was realized that many of the copies given away were being resold it was decided to sell the second edition, and this set the template for the future of Shire. [1]
Over the following years Shire expanded its Discovering series and launched several new series including Lifelines, [2] , Shire Albums, [3] Shire Archaeology, [2] and Shire Egyptology. [1]
In 2007 the company was acquired by Oxford-based military history publisher Osprey and operated from Osprey's offices in Oxford. [1]
During 2008 Shire began a revamp of its list. It was announced that several former Shire series (including Life Lines, Shire Garden History and History in Camera) would be absorbed into a new series called Shire Library, which would retain and expand on the numbering system used by the old Album series, which has long formed the backbone of the Shire Library. Books in the Shire Library were to have a new series cover design, as would reissued books in the Archaeology and Egyptology series. [1]
It was further announced that Shire's list of forthcoming publications would include an increased number of new titles, as well as reissues of out-of-print titles, and new editions of existing titles.
In December 2010 Osprey Publishing, along with all the Shire titles, was acquired by Bloomsbury Publishing. [4]
John Rotheroe, Thirty Years of Shire Publications: A Bibliography for Collectors of Shire Books, Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire, Shire Publications, 1992.
Monks Risborough is a village and ecclesiastical parish in Buckinghamshire, England, lying between Princes Risborough and Great Kimble. The village lies at the foot of the northern scarp of the Chiltern Hills. It is 8 miles (13 km) south of the county town of Aylesbury and 9.5 miles (15.3 km) north of High Wycombe, on the A4010 road.
Princes Risborough is a small town in Buckinghamshire, England, about 9 miles south of Aylesbury and 8 miles north west of High Wycombe. Bledlow lies to the west and Monks Risborough to the east. It lies at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, at the north end of a gap or pass through the Chilterns, the south end of which is at West Wycombe. The A4010 road follows this route from West Wycombe through the town and then on to Aylesbury.
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Hamish Hamilton Limited was a British book publishing house, founded in 1931 eponymously by the half-Scot half-American Jamie Hamilton. Jamie Hamilton was often referred to as Hamish Hamilton.
Joyce Ann Tyldesley is a British archaeologist and Egyptologist, academic, writer and broadcaster who specialises in the women of ancient Egypt.
George Bell & Sons was a book publishing house located in London, United Kingdom, from 1839 to 1986.
A & C Black is a British book publishing company, owned since 2002 by Bloomsbury Publishing.
Osprey Publishing is a British, Oxford-based, publishing company specializing in military history. Predominantly an illustrated publisher, many of their books contain full-colour artwork plates, maps and photographs, and the company produces over a dozen ongoing series, each focusing on a specific aspect of the history of warfare. Osprey has published over 2,300 books. They are best known for their Men-at-Arms series, running to over 500 titles, with each book dedicated to a specific historical army or military unit. Osprey is an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing.
Henry Holt and Company is an American book publishing company based in New York City. One of the oldest publishers in the United States, it was founded in 1866 by Henry Holt and Frederick Leypoldt. Currently, the company publishes in the fields of American and international fiction, biography, history and politics, science, psychology, and health, as well as books for children's literature. In the US, it operates under Macmillan Publishers.
Hamlyn is a UK publishing company founded by Paul Hamlyn in 1950 with an initial investment of £350. His desire was to create "fine books with the common touch" which remains the foundation of its commercial success. It is part of the Octopus Publishing Group, now owned by Hachette Livre.
Odhams Press was a British publishing company. Originally a jobbing printer and newspaper publisher, founded in 1890, it took the name Odhams Press Ltd in 1920 when it merged with John Bull magazine. By 1937 it had founded the first colour weekly, Woman, for which it set up and operated a dedicated high-speed print works. The company also owned Ideal Home and acquired the equestrian magazine Horse and Hound. Later, Odhams expanded into book publishing, for example publishing Winston Churchill's Painting as a Pastime, Rupert Gunnis's Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660–1851, and an edition of the complete works of William Shakespeare.
George G. Harrap, Ltd is a now defunct publisher of high quality specialty books, many of them educational, such as the memoirs of Winston Churchill, or highly illustrated with line drawings, engravings or etchings, such as the much republished classic educational children's book The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone from at least 1901 into the 1980s.
Publishers of English classics for the educational trade, Harrap was also known for publishing finely illustrated books by Rackham, Gooden, and others, and as the publisher of Winston Churchill.
George Nicholas "Nick" Georgano was a British author, specialising in motoring history. His most notable work is The Complete Encyclopedia of Motorcars, first published in 1968.
Bigbury Camp is a univallate hill fort in the parish of Harbledown and Rough Common in Kent in England. The fort is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, with a list entry identification number of 1005169. Bigbury Camp is the only confirmed Iron Age hill fort in east Kent. It is managed by Kent Wildlife Trust.
Laura Seddon Greeting Card Collection is a collection of greeting cards now in the Manchester Metropolitan University, in the Sir Kenneth Green Library, on the All Saints Campus.
Martin Bommas is a German Egyptologist, archaeologist, and philologist. He is Professor and Museum Director at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia and the Director of the Qubbet el-Hawa Research Project (QHRP) in Aswan, Egypt. Prior to his position at Macquarie, he studied Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg, was Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Basel (2004-2006) and the University of Zurich (2005), Senior Lecturer and Reader in Egyptology at the University of Birmingham, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology (2014-2018). In addition to his work at Qubbet el-Hawa, he has been involved in archaeological projects at Elephantine and Thebes in Egypt, and Karakorum in Pakistan. He has discovered and published Egyptian papyrus collections in Heidelberg, The Getty Center in Los Angeles and the Nicholson Collection in Sydney. In the museum sector, he contributed to the establishment the Archaeological Museum at Elephantine (1995-1998) and worked as Curator of the Eton Myers Collection at the University of Birmingham (2010-2018).
The Ure Museum’s ancient Egyptian funerary boat is a 12th Dynasty, Middle Kingdom model boat; believed to have been manufactured between 1991–1786 BC. It was discovered during excavations in the group of tombs described as the ‘Tombs of the Officials’ at Beni Hasan, Egypt.
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