W. S. Cowell inherits
In 1875, Walter Samuel Cowell inherited the business and appointed W. B. Hanson to handle the printing work. When the firm was incorporated in 1900, both W. B. Hanson and his son H. Hanson had significant share holdings.
W.S. Cowell Ltd was a British printing company that produced a variety of books, including popular children's literature of the 1930s and prestigious coffee table books. Established in 1818, the company played a significant role in the history of printing in Ipswich. The company developed the Plastocowell printing process. However after a number of mergers in the late twentieth century, the name was finally dropped by its corporate owners in 1988.
Samuel Harrison Cowell was taken on as an apprentice by Richard Nottingham Rose, who had a printing/bookselling business in the Buttermarket, Ipswich. [1] In 1818, Abraham Kersey Cowell, a corn merchant from Ipswich, England, set up his second son, as a printer and stationer at No 10 in the Buttermarket in Ipswich. As well as selling books, Samuel Cowell also sold tea, coffee and wine. [2]
In 1875, Walter Samuel Cowell inherited the business and appointed W. B. Hanson to handle the printing work. When the firm was incorporated in 1900, both W. B. Hanson and his son H. Hanson had significant share holdings.
William S. Cowell started publishing postcards launching their Christchurch series. These included illustrations by Parsons Norman and Robert Gallon [3]
When W. S. Cowell died in 1923, the Hanson family acquired the business. At that time, it contained a retail store, a bar, a wine and spirits business and the printing works. During the 1930s, the W.S. Cowell firm printed children's book series such as Babar the Elephant, Little Tim and Orlando. The firm was able to offer high colour printing. W. S. Cowell printed prestigious works such as The Queen's Stamps and The Wild Flowers of America. They also printed books with high quality prints for the publishers, Robert Hale Ltd, including Cecil Keeling's Pictures of Persia, a book which contained the authors memoirs from his wartime service there, alongside 30 colour plates. [4]
In 1963, Grampian Holdings acquired W. S. Cowell Ltd. E. H. Hanson and R. G. Smith continued to manage the company until 1968. The printing operations were moved out of the Buttermarket to Lovetofts Drive in 1986. In 1988 the company merged with San Serif Ltd. and the name W. S. Cowell Ltd. was dropped. [5]
In 2022, artists including Kathleen Hale, Eric Ravilious, Edward Ardizzone, Hilary Stebbing, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse were included in the exhibition "Picture Books For All: The Fine Printing of W. S. Cowell Ltd." at The Hold heritage centre in Ipswich. [6] [7]
In publishing, printers are both companies providing printing services and individuals who directly operate printing presses.
Edward Burgess Hudson (1854–1936) was the founder of Country Life magazine in 1897.
Gerrard Street is a street in the West End of London, in the Chinatown area.
Eyre & Spottiswoode was the London-based printing firm established in 1739 that was the King's Printer, and subsequently, a publisher prior to being incorporated; it once went by the name of Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & co. ltd. In April 1929, it was incorporated as Eyre & Spottiswoode (Publishers) Ltd.. It became part of Associated Book Publishers in 1958 and merged with Methuen in the 1970s with the resulting company known as Eyre Methuen.
George Baxter (1804–1867) was an English artist and printer based in London. He is credited with the invention of commercially viable colour printing.
The Heritage Press is a trade name which has been used by multiple printers and publishers. Most notably, "The Heritage Press" was an imprint of George Macy Companies, Ltd., from 1937 to 1982. The Heritage Press reprinted classic volumes previously published by the more exclusive Limited Editions Club.
Beyond Words Publishing is a book publishing company located in Portland, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1983, the company was unprofitable in its early years, though its works were award-winning. The privately owned company focuses on non-fiction titles in the New Age genre, but began as a publisher of coffee table books. Beyond Words has a national distribution agreement with Simon & Schuster's Altria Books imprint and has published works by John Gray, Masaru Emoto, and Rhonda Byrne, including her book The Secret.
Abel Bowen (1790-1850) was an engraver, publisher, and author in early 19th-century Boston, Massachusetts.
Gale and Polden was a British printer and publisher. Founded in Brompton, near Chatham, Kent in 1868, the business subsequently moved to Aldershot, where they were based until closure in November 1981 after the company had been bought by media mogul Robert Maxwell.
Raphael Tuck & Sons was a business started by Raphael Tuck and his wife in Bishopsgate in the City of London in October 1866, selling pictures and greeting cards, and eventually selling postcards, which was their most successful line. Their business was one of the best known in the "postcard boom" of the late 1890s and early 1900s. During the Blitz, the company headquarters, Raphael House, was destroyed, including the originals for most of their series. The company never fully recovered.
John Lewis (1912–1996) was a Welsh typographer, printer, illustrator and collector of printed ephemera.
Robert Hale Limited was a London publisher of fiction and non-fiction books, founded in 1936, and also known as Robert Hale. It was based at Clerkenwell House, Clerkenwell Green. It ceased trading on 1 December 2015 and its imprints were sold to The Crowood Press.
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.
Thomas Constable FRSE was a Scottish printer and publisher.
The history of printing in Ipswich, Suffolk dates back to the sixteenth century. The oldest extant book published in Ipswich is an edition of Historia Evangelica by Juvencus published in 1534. However this book was printed in Antwerp. In 1547 and 1548, there was a sudden increase in printing in Ipswich. For many years it was thought that this was the work of three printers, but more recent research has indicated there were but two, the third being a false imprint for books printed in continental Europe.
A large collection of photographs was created by two generations of photographers based in Barrow in Furness, Cumbria. The collection is currently being catalogued before being deposited in Cumbria Archives, where they will be available through their online catalogue CASCAT.
Cecil Keeling (1912-1976) was an English designer and illustrator. He produced a varied range of work, including scraperboard, lithography and linocuts as well as a number of wood engravings.
Bibliography of early American publishers and printers is a selection of books, journals and other publications devoted to these topics covering their careers and other activities before, during and after the American Revolution. Various works that are not primarily devoted to those topics, but whose content devotes itself to them in significant measure, are sometimes included here also. Works about Benjamin Franklin, a famous printer and publisher, among other things, are too numerous to list in this bibliography, can be found at Bibliography of Benjamin Franklin, and are generally not included here unless they are intensely devoted to Franklin's printing career. Single accounts of printers and publishers that occur in encyclopedia articles are not included here.
Hilary Stebbing (1915-1996) was an artist, illustrator and children's author particularly associated with Puffin Books, and active in the United Kingdom from the 1940s to the 1960s.
Samuel Harrison Cowell was a Suffolk businessman who pioneered anastatic lithography in Ipswich. Cowell issued leaflets at the Great Exhibition in 1851 to advertise the new technology.
3. E.H.Hanson - W.S.Cowell Ltd Ipswich Historical Notes - Ipswich Archive Office.
