Duckworth Books, originally Gerald Duckworth and Company, founded in 1898 by

Gerald Duckworth Gerald de l'Etang Duckworth (29 October 1870 – 28 September 1937) was an English publisher, who founded the London company that bears his name. Henry James and John Galsworthy were among the firm's early authors. Background and early life ...

, is a British publisher.Our History
duckworthbooks.co.uk. Retrieved 29 November 2020.

History

Gerald Duckworth founded the company in 1898, setting up its office at 3

Henrietta Street, Covent Garden Henrietta Street is a street in Covent Garden, London, that was once home to a number of artists and later became the location of many publishing firms. Location Henrietta Street is near to Covent Garden piazza. It continues Southampton Stree ...

. Staff included Edward Garnett as literary advisor and (Herbert) Jonathan Cape as the sales manager. Until the mid-1920s, the company's notable authors included

Hilaire Belloc Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc ( ; ; 27 July 187016 July 1953) was a French-English writer, politician, and historian. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. His Catholic fait ...

Anton Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; ; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his b ...

, W. H. Davies,

Elinor Glyn Elinor Glyn ( Sutherland; 17 October 1864 – 23 September 1943) was a British novelist and scriptwriter who specialised in romantic fiction, which was considered scandalous for its time, although her works are relatively tame by modern stand ...

, W. H. Hudson,

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

D. H. Lawrence David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, literary critic, travel writer, essayist, and painter. His modernist works reflect on modernity, social alienation ...

, W. Heath Robinson and

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Vir ...

(the founder's half-sister). Authors in the next two decades included

John Galsworthy John Galsworthy (; 14 August 1867 – 31 January 1933) was an English novelist and playwright. He is best known for his trilogy of novels collectively called '' The Forsyte Saga'', and two later trilogies, ''A Modern Comedy'' and ''End of th ...

Anthony Powell Anthony Dymoke Powell ( ; 21 December 1905 – 28 March 2000) was an English novelist best known for his 12-volume work '' A Dance to the Music of Time'', published between 1951 and 1975. It is on the list of longest novels in English. Powell ...

and

Edith Sitwell Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell (7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964) was a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells. She reacted badly to her eccentric, unloving parents and lived much of her life with her governess ...

. Following Gerald Duckworth's death in 1937, control of the company passed to Mervyn Horder and Patrick Crichton-Smith. The company, heavily in debt after the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

, suffered the loss of "its entire stock of unbound sheets" as the result of bomb damage during the Second World War. From 1945 until the 1970s the firm published authors such

Simone de Beauvoir Simone Lucie Ernestine Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir (, ; ; 9 January 1908 – 14 April 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. Though she did not consider herself a philosopher, nor was she ...

Charlotte Mew Charlotte Mary Mew (15 November 1869 – 24 March 1928) was an English poet whose work spanned the eras of Victorian poetry and Modernism. Early life and education Mew was born in Bloomsbury, London, daughter of the architect Frederick Mew ( ...

and

Evelyn Waugh Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) 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 ''Decli ...

. In 1968, Gerard Duckworth & Co. was purchased by Colin Haycraft and a friend Tim Simon. Haycraft would run the company until his death in 1994. In this period Haycraft was described as a "one man university press" publishing at Duckworth a "body of works on Greek and Roman literature, philosophy and society" whose scholarship and originality "equalled the output of the large university houses". Meanwhile his wife, the writer Alice Thomas Ellis, was Duckworth's fiction editor and was responsible for publishing "Duckworth's best-selling author",

Beryl Bainbridge Dame Beryl Margaret Bainbridge (21 November 1932 – 2 July 2010) was an English writer. She was primarily known for her works of psychological fiction, often macabre tales set among the English working class. She won the Whitbread Awards priz ...

. The company moved from Henrietta Street to The Old Piano Factory in Camden, North London, on Old Gloucester Street, made famous by

Alan Bennett Alan Bennett (born 9 May 1934) is an English actor, author, playwright and screenwriter. He has received numerous awards and honours including four BAFTA Awards, four Laurence Olivier Awards, and two Tony Awards. In 2005 he received the Socie ...

in his bestselling book, ''The Lady in the Van.'' In the period from the 1970s to the 1990s authors published by the company including John Bayley, Beryl Bainbridge,

Jeffrey Bernard Jeffrey Joseph Bernard (; 27 May 1932 – 4 September 1997) was an English journalist, best known for his weekly column "Low Life" in ''The Spectator'' magazine, and also notorious for a feckless and chaotic career and life of alcohol abus ...

, Alice Thomas Ellis,

Penelope Fitzgerald Penelope Mary Fitzgerald (17 December 1916 – 28 April 2000) was a Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer from Lincoln, England. In 2008 ''The Times'' listed her among "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". ''The Ob ...

Ogden Nash Frederic Ogden Nash (August 19, 1902 – May 19, 1971) was an American poet well known for his Light poetry, light verse, of which he wrote more than 500 pieces. With his unconventional rhyme, rhyming schemes, he was declared by ''The New York T ...

Dorothy Parker Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet and writer of fiction, plays and screenplays based in New York; she was known for her caustic wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles. Parker ros ...

and

Oliver Sacks Oliver Wolf Sacks (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British neurology, neurologist, Natural history, naturalist, historian of science, and writer. Born in London, Sacks received his medical degree in 1958 from The Queen's College, Oxford ...

. In 1998 the company celebrated its centenary and moved its premises to Frith Street,

Soho SoHo, short for "South of Houston Street, Houston Street", is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, art installations such as The Wall ...

. In 2003, the company suffered a financial collapse and was put into

receivership In law, receivership is a situation in which an institution or enterprise is held by a receiver – a person "placed in the custodial responsibility for the property of others, including tangible and intangible assets and rights" – especia ...

. Its assets were bought by Peter Mayer, a former chief executive of

Penguin Books Penguin Books Limited is a Germany, German-owned English publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers the Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the ...

, who already owned

The Overlook Press The Overlook Press is an American publishing house based in New York, New York which considers itself "a home for distinguished books that had been 'overlooked' by larger houses". History and operations The Overlook Press was formed in 1971 by ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. Under new leadership, the company published authors such as

Max Brooks Maximilian Michael Brooks (born May 22, 1972) is an American actor and author. He is the son of comedian Mel Brooks and actress Anne Bancroft. Much of Brooks's writing focuses on Zombie (fictional), zombie stories. He was a senior fellow at the ...

Julia Child Julia Carolyn Child (Birth name#Maiden and married names, née McWilliams; August 15, 1912 – August 13, 2004) was an American chef, author, and television personality. She is recognized for having brought French cuisine to the American pu ...

, J. J. Connolly, Suzanne Fagence Cooper and

Ray Kurzweil Raymond Kurzweil ( ; born February 12, 1948) is an American computer scientist, author, entrepreneur, futurist, and inventor. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), speech synthesis, text-to-speech synthesis, spee ...

. In 2007 it was reported that Duckworth's trade books were then to be published "under the Duckworth Overlook" imprint while academic books would continue to "carry just the Duckworth name". In 2010, Duckworth's academic list was acquired by

Bloomsbury Publishing Bloomsbury Publishing plc is a British worldwide publishing house of fiction and non-fiction. Bloomsbury's head office is located on Bedford Square in Bloomsbury, an area of the London Borough of Camden. It has a US publishing office located in ...

. After Mayer's death in 2018, Duckworth was sold to Prelude Books and is now operated under the leadership of Pete Duncan and Matt Casbourne. Prelude Books rebranded itself under the name Duckworth Books and as of 2020 the company has been operating from an office in

Richmond-upon-Thames The London Borough of Richmond upon Thames () in south-west London, England, forms part of Outer London and is the only London borough on both sides of the River Thames. It was created in 1965 when three smaller council areas amalgamated under ...

with a focus on publishing non-fiction and historical fiction.

Book series

* Covent Garden Library * Crown Library * Great Lives * Greenback Library * Hundred Years Series * The Library of Art * Masters of Painting * Modern Plays * New Reader’s Library * Noted Irish Lives * The Popular Library of Art * Reader’s LibraryReaders' Library (Duckworth)
seriesofseries.com. Retrieved 29 November 2020. * The Roadmender Series * The Student Series * Studies in Theology * Two Shillings Net Series

References

External links

Company homepageA List of the Libraries and Series of Copyright Books Published by Duckworth & Co.
1920
Archives of the company from 1936, including editorial correspondence with authors
at

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gerald Duckworth And Company Publishing companies of the United Kingdom Publishing companies established in 1898