Thames & Hudson (sometimes T&H for brevity) is a publisher of illustrated books in all visually creative categories: art, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and the performing arts. It also publishes books on archaeology, history, and popular culture. Headquartered in London, it has a sister company in New York City, and subsidiaries in Melbourne, Singapore, and Hong Kong. In Paris it has a sister company, Éditions Thames & Hudson, and a subsidiary called Interart which distributes English-language books. The Thames & Hudson group currently employs approximately 150 staff in London and approximately 65 more around the world. The publishing company was founded in 1949 by Walter and Eva Neurath, who aimed to make the world of art and the research of top scholars available to a wider public. The company's name reflects its international presence, particularly in London and New York. It remains an independent, family-owned company, and is one of the largest publishers of illustrated books, with over 2,000 titles in print.

History

Walter Neurath Walter Neurath (1903–1967) was a British publisher, the co-founder in 1949, with his wife, Eva Neurath, of Thames & Hudson. Early life Neurath was born in Josefstädterstrasse, Vienna, Austria on the 1st October 1903, the only child of Alois Ne ...

was born in Vienna in 1903, and ran an art gallery and published illustrated books there. In 1938, he left for London, where he initially worked as production director of Adprint, a London book-packaging company established by fellow Viennese émigré Wolfgang Foges. While at Adprint, Neurath designed and produced the hardback King Penguin Books, and developed the book series ''Britain in Pictures'' which integrated images with text rather than separating them into "plates" sections. Neurath and Foges helped pioneer the concept of book packaging and co-edition publishing, in which books are conceived, commissioned, and produced, and then sold to publishers in different markets, countries, and languages, in order to create large print-runs and thereby lower costs. Wishing to take book packaging and international publication further, and recognizing the need to defray the high production costs of illustrated books, in 1949 Neurath established his own publishing house, establishing offices in London and New York, and named the company Thames & Hudson to indicate it would publish in both British and North American markets, with reference to the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the ...

and the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to