Ashgate Publishing

• 1. Introduction

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  Ashgate Publishing spent nearly five decades as a fixture of British academic life, turning out books and journals on subjects from social science to the arts before quietly disappearing into a corporate acquisition. Founded in 1967 and based in Farnham, a market town in Surrey, Ashgate carved out a niche across the social sciences, humanities, arts, and professional practice. What forces shaped the imprints that gathered under its name? What happened to a £20 million company when the consolidation wave of academic publishing finally caught up with it? And what became of the storied Lund Humphries imprint after the sale? Those are the questions this documentary will answer.

• 2. A House of Imprints

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  Gower Publishing was one of the most prominent names under the Ashgate umbrella, focused on professional business and management titles. Alongside it sat Dartmouth, another imprint in the group. The most historically rooted was Lund Humphries, which traced its origins back to 1939 and had built a reputation for illustrated art books, with a particular concentration on modern British art. Together these imprints gave Ashgate a range that extended from academic monographs to professional handbooks and glossy art volumes. Ashgate also maintained offices well beyond Farnham, with a presence in Burlington, Vermont, serving North American readers, and a second British office in London.

• 3. GpmFirst and Digital Moves

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  In March 2015, Gower unveiled a platform called GpmFirst, a web-based community of practice aimed squarely at project management professionals. Subscribers gained access to more than 120 project management titles as well as discussion forums and articles relevant to business and project management. The launch signalled that at least part of the Ashgate group was looking beyond the traditional print monograph and toward subscription-based digital communities. That move came just months before the announcement that would transform the company entirely.

• 4. The Informa Sale

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  In July 2015, Ashgate was sold to Informa for a reported £20 million. The acquisition folded the company into one of the largest academic publishing conglomerates in the world. Lund Humphries did not follow the same path: it was relaunched as an independent publisher in December 2015, separating itself from the deal and returning to stand-alone status. By February 2016, the remaining independent imprints of Ashgate had been absorbed into the Routledge imprint, itself part of the Taylor and Francis group within Informa.