Curated playlist
Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom
- RoutledgeEnglish multinational academic publisher
- Hodder & StoughtonThe publisher of the Famous Five began with a fourteen-year-old boy taking a job.
- The Bodley HeadThe Bodley Head began with a piece of sculpture. Above the door of a London bookshop in 1887 sat a bust of a man long dead, and the shop took its name from him. Over the following century and more, that name appeared on the first Penguin…
- HarperCollinsHarperCollins joined a New York printer and a Glasgow printer that never met. Murdoch merged them in 1989.
- Palgrave MacmillanPalgrave Macmillan is named for a Victorian family of four brothers.
- Penguin BooksOne order of 63,000 books from Woolworths paid for all of Penguin Books.
- Hamish HamiltonHamish Hamilton brought Raymond Chandler and J. D. Salinger to British readers.
- Serpent's TailSerpent's Tail, a London publishing house, earned a memorable verdict from Boyd Tonkin, who wrote about it for The Independent. Tonkin looked across its catalogue of hard-boiled noir, translated gems and left-field cultural reportage. He…
- Cambridge University PressCambridge University Press turned down the proposal that became the Oxford English Dictionary.
- Manchester University PressManchester University Press began in 1904 as a university committee. In its first year it issued only 17 publications.
- BBC BooksBBC Books turned down The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a book that has since sold over 14,000,000 copies worldwide. The rejection happened in the years when the imprint still traded as BBC Publishing. It sits oddly beside the…
- Continuum International Publishing GroupContinuum International Publishing Group was a publisher of academic books, with editorial offices in London and in New York City. Its shelves held philosophy, film studies, theology and a long run of small books about single music albums.…
- Smith, Elder & Co.In 1847, a London publisher received Jane Eyre from an author named Currer Bell.
- Ashgate PublishingIn July 2015, Ashgate Publishing was sold to Informa for a reported £20 million.
- Everyman's LibraryEveryman's Library launched in 1906 with a one-shilling copy of Boswell's Life of Johnson.
- Penguin GroupPenguin Group is a British trade book publisher, and on the 1st of July 2013 its future changed with the finalising of a merger. From that day it became part of a new company called Penguin Random House. A publisher founded in 1935 had…
- Macmillan PublishersAmazon once pulled every Macmillan book from its website. It backed down on the 31st of January 2010.
- Osprey PublishingOsprey Publishing began with a packet of tea, not a book. Brooke Bond put aircraft cards in its tea in the 1960s.
- Berghahn BooksIn 2019, Berghahn Books offered 13 anthropology journals for a plan to make them free.
- Casemate PublishersIn 2001, David Farnsworth took over a leftover book distribution operation and created Casemate.
- Virgin BooksWhen Doctor Who was cancelled in 1989, Virgin Books began publishing new novels. They ran from 1991 to 1997.
- Hogarth PressThe Hogarth Press began with a nineteen-pound handpress in a Richmond dining room.
- Allen & UnwinThe publisher of The Hobbit kept its name only in Australia after 1986.
- Pen and Sword BooksPen and Sword Books, also written as Pen & Sword, lists more than 6,000 titles in print. Every year it adds another 500. These are British books, issued in hardback and softback, and many are also sold as ebook downloads. The subjects lean…
- Liverpool University PressLiverpool University Press is the third oldest university press in England. It began in 1899.