Hutchinson was a British publishing firm which operated from 1887 until 1985, when it underwent several mergers. It is currently an imprint which is ultimately owned by
Bertelsmann, the German publishing conglomerate.
History
Hutchinson began as Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., an English book publisher, founded in London in 1887 by Sir George Hutchinson and later run by his son,
Walter Hutchinson (1887–1950). Hutchinson's published books and magazines such as ''
The Lady's Realm
''The Lady's Realm'' was a British women's magazine published from 1896 until 1914, possibly until 1915. It primarily targeted upper-class readers as well as an aspirational middle-class audience, featuring photographs, poems, fiction, and columns ...
'', ''Adventure-story Magazine'', ''Hutchinson's Magazine'' and ''Woman''.
[Ashley, M. (2006). ''The Age of Storytellers. British Popular Fiction Magazines 1880–1950''. London: The British Library and Oak Knoll Press.]
In the 1920s, Walter Hutchinson published many of the "spook stories" of
E. F. Benson in ''Hutchinson's Magazine'' and then in collections in a number of books. The company also first published
Arthur Conan Doyle's
Professor Challenger novels, five novels by mystery writer
Harry Stephen Keeler, and short stories by
Eden Phillpotts
Eden Phillpotts (4 November 1862 – 29 December 1960) was an English author, poet and dramatist. He was born in Mount Abu, India, was educated in Plymouth, Devon, and worked as an insurance officer for ten years before studying for the stage a ...
. In 1929, Walter Hutchinson stopped publishing magazines to concentrate on books.
[ In the 1930s, Hutchinson published H. G. Wells's '']The Bulpington of Blup
''The Bulpington of Blup'' is a 1932 novel by H. G. Wells. It is a character study analyzing the psychological sources of resistance to Wellsian ideology, and was influenced by Wells's acquaintance with Carl Gustav Jung and his ideas.
The inner ...
'' as well as the first English translations of Vladimir Nabokov's '' Camera Obscura'' (translated by Winifred Roy with Nabokov credited as Vladimir Nabokoff-Sirin) in 1936 and '' Despair'' (translated by Nabokov himself) under its John Long marque of paperbacks.
In 1947, the company launched the Hutchinson University Library book series.[Hutchinson University Library – Book Series List](_blank)
publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 22 October 2017.
Among notable, non-fiction books, in 1959, Hutchinson & Co. published the first English edition of Karl Popper's most famous work, '' The Logic of Scientific Discovery'', first published as ''Logik der Forschung
''The Logic of Scientific Discovery'' is a 1959 book about the philosophy of science by the philosopher Karl Popper. Popper rewrote his book in English from the 1934 (imprint '1935') German original, titled ''Logik der Forschung. Zur Erkenntnist ...
'' in 1934.
The company merged with Century Publishing in 1985 to form Century Hutchinson. The new company acquired Blond, Muller and White in 1987. Century Hutchinson was folded into the British Random House Group in 1989, briefly known as Random Century (1990 - 92), Century became an imprint of Cornerstone Publishing, a publishing house of Penguin Random House UK, which is in turn a division of Penguin Random House, which itself, since 2013, was owned jointly by Bertelsmann and Pearson plc and since 2019, just by Bertelsmann.
Book series
* Chestnut Library
* Hutchinson's Booklover's Library
* Hutchinson Pocket Special
* Hutchinson's Pocket Guides
* Hutchinson’s Pocket Library
* Hutchinson’s Pocket Library: Non-Fiction
* Hutchinson's Popular Pocket Library
* Hutchinson Science SeriesHutchinson Science Library - Book Series List
publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 14 August 2022.
* Hutchinson University Library
See also
* ''
Hutchinson Encyclopedia''
References
External links
*
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{{Authority control
1887 establishments in England
Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom
Publishing companies established in 1887