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 D ...

, 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 Street ...

. Staff included

Edward Garnett Edward William Garnett (5 January 1868 – 19 February 1937) was an English writer, critic and literary editor, who was instrumental in the publication of D. H. Lawrence's ''Sons and Lovers''. Early life and family Edward Garnett was born i ...

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 Franco-English writer and historian of the early twentieth century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. H ...

Anton Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860 Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904 Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career ...

W. H. Davies William Henry Davies (3 July 1871 – 26 September 1940) was a Welsh poet and writer, who spent much of his life as a tramp or hobo in the United Kingdom and the United States, yet became one of the most popular poets of his time. His themes inc ...

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 William Henry Hudson (4 August 1841 – 18 August 1922) – known in Argentina as Guillermo Enrique Hudson – was an English Argentines, Anglo-Argentine author, natural history, naturalist and ornithology, ornithologist. Life Hudson was the ...

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 writer, novelist, poet and essayist. His works reflect on modernity, industrialization, sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity and instinct. His best-k ...

, W. Heath Robinson and

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

(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. Notable works include ''The Forsyte Saga'' (1906–1921) and its sequels, ''A Modern Comedy'' and ''End of the Chapter''. He won the Nobel Prize i ...

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 (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

, 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, and even th ...

Charlotte Mew Charlotte Mary Mew (15 November 1869 – 24 March 1928) was an English poet whose work spans the eras of Victorian poetry and Modernism. Early life and education Mew was born in Bloomsbury, London, daughter of the architect Frederick Mew (18 ...

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 Alice Thomas Ellis (born Ann Margaret Lindholm, 9 September 1932 – 8 March 2005) was an English writer and essayist born in Liverpool. She wrote numerous novels and some non-fiction, including cookery books. Life Ellis was born in Liverpool to ...

, 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 from Liverpool. She was primarily known for her works of psychological fiction, often macabre tales set among the English working class. Bainbridge won the ...

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

, 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 verse, of which he wrote over 500 pieces. With his unconventional rhyming schemes, he was declared by ''The New York Times'' the country's best ...

Dorothy Parker Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, writer, critic, and satirist based in New York; she was known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhap ...

and

Oliver Sacks Oliver Wolf Sacks, (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and writer. Born in Britain, Sacks received his medical degree in 1958 from The Queen's College, Oxford, before moving to the Uni ...

. In 1998 the company celebrated its centenary and moved its premises to Frith Street, Soho. 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"—especially in ca ...

. Its assets were bought by

Peter Mayer Peter Michael Mayer (28 March 1936 – 11 May 2018) was a British-born American independent publisher who was president of The Overlook Press/Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc., a Woodstock, New York-based publishing company he founded with his father ...

, a former chief executive of

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British 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 following year.The Overlook Press The Overlook Press is an American publishing house based in New York, New York, that considers itself "a home for distinguished books that had been 'overlooked' by larger houses". History and operations It was formed in 1971 by Peter Mayer, who ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Under new leadership, the company published authors such as

Max Brooks Maximillian Michael Brooks (born May 22, 1972) is an American actor and author. He is the son of comedy filmmaker Mel Brooks and actress Anne Bancroft. Much of Brooks's writing focuses on zombie stories. He is a senior fellow at the Modern War I ...

Julia Child Julia Carolyn Child (née McWilliams; August 15, 1912 – August 13, 2004) was an American cooking teacher, author, and television personality. She is recognized for bringing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook, '' ...

, J. J. Connolly,

Suzanne Fagence Cooper Suzanne Fagence Cooper is a British non-fiction writer who has written extensively on the Pre-Raphaelites and Victorian women. Education and career Fagence Cooper received a BA in history from Oxford University and spent 12 years as a curator o ...

and

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

. 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. It is a constituent of the FTSE SmallCap Index. Bloomsbury's head office is located in Bloomsbury, an area of the London Borough of Camden. It has a U ...

. 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 southwest London 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 the London ...

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)
owu.edu. 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-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

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