Anthony Richard James Wylie Godwin (17 December 1919 – 15 March 1976) was an influential

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

publisher of the 1960s/1970s. His contribution to the publishing industry is recognized in the form of the Tony Godwin Memorial Trust. Born in

Ledbury Ledbury is a market town and civil parish in the county of Herefordshire, England, lying east of Hereford, and west of the Malvern Hills. It has a significant number of timber-framed structures, in particular along Church Lane and High Stree ...

, he started the

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretica ...

bookshop Bookselling is the commercial trading of books which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. People who engage in bookselling are called booksellers, bookdealers, bookpeople, bookmen, or bookwomen. The founding of librar ...

Better Books ''Better Books'' was an independent bookstore. It was founded by Tony Godwin and was located at 94 Charing Cross Road, London. The shop was a significant location in the 1960s counterculture movement in London. History It was founded by British p ...

Charing Cross Road Charing Cross Road is a street in central London running immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles Circus (the intersection with Oxford Street) and then becomes Tottenham Court Road. It leads from the north in the direction ...

, where author

Barry Miles Barry Miles (born 21 February 1943) is an English author known for his participation in and writing on the subjects of the 1960s London underground and counterculture. He is the author of numerous books and his work has also regularly appeare ...

worked. He also ran Bumpus Books and the City Bookshop in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. In May 1960, Godwin was recruited to join the senior editorial group at

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.Germano Facetti Germano Facetti (5 May 1926 – 8 April 2006) was an Italian graphic designer who headed design at Penguin Books from 1962 to 1971. Biography Born in Milan, Facetti was arrested in 1943, age 17, for putting up anti- Fascist posters. He wa ...

in January 1961, who replaced the original Penguin cover design system with the grid layout. He also brought in another designer

Alan Aldridge Alan Aldridge (8 July 1938 – 17 February 2017) was a British artist, graphic designer and illustrator. He is best known for his psychedelic artwork made for books and record covers by The Beatles and The Who. Personal life Aldridge was born ...

who pushed for a more radical transformation. Godwin established the

Penguin Modern Classics Penguin Classics is an imprint of Penguin Books under which classic works of literature are published in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean among other languages. Literary critics see books in this series as important members of the Wester ...

subseries in 1961 and The English Library series in 1965. In 1967, Godwin published Penguin's English edition of acclaimed French cartoonist Siné's periodical ''Massacre''. It contained

anti-clerical Anti-clericalism is opposition to religious authority, typically in social or political matters. Historical anti-clericalism has mainly been opposed to the influence of Roman Catholicism. Anti-clericalism is related to secularism, which seeks to ...

cartoons and

Foyles W & G Foyle Ltd. (usually called simply Foyles) is a bookseller with a chain of seven stores in England. It is best known for its flagship store in Charing Cross Road, London. Foyles was once listed in the ''Guinness Book of Records'' as the w ...

book store chain refused to stock the book. A row over the book led to Godwin being fired by Penguin's founder, Allen Lane. Godwin went on to become managing director of publisher

Weidenfeld and Nicolson Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd (established 1949), often shortened to W&N or Weidenfeld, is a British publisher of fiction and reference books. It has been a division of the French-owned Orion Publishing Group since 1991. History George Weidenfeld ...

, and in 1972 crossed the Atlantic to start his own imprint under the umbrella of American publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch. Godwin published many high-profile writers such as

Edna O'Brien Josephine Edna O'Brien (born 15 December 1930) is an Irish novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and short-story writer. Elected to Aosdána by her fellow artists, she was honoured with the title Saoi in 2015 and the "UK and Ireland Nobel" ...

and Len Deighton.

Marriage

In 1961, Godwin married his second wife, Fay Godwin, who became a successful landscape photographer after he left her in 1969. They had two sons Nicholas and Jeremy. Nicholas went on to become a documentary maker.

Death

Godwin died suddenly in

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 ...

in 1976 from an asthma attack, aged 56. Novelist

John Berger John Peter Berger (; 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel '' G.'' won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism '' Ways of Seeing'', written as an accompaniment to the ...

said of Godwin, " w that he is dead I feel like an orphan."Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Godwin, Tony 1919 births 1976 deaths British editors British book publishers (people) Businesspeople from London Penguin Books people Deaths from asthma 20th-century English businesspeople