André Deutsch (15 November 1917 – 11 April 2000) was a Hungarian-born British

publisher Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

who founded an eponymous publishing company in 1951.

Biography

Deutsch was born on 15 November 1917 in

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

, Hungary, the son of a Jewish dentist. He attended school in Budapest and in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

, Austria. The ''

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "German Question, Greater Germany") arose after t ...

'' led to him fleeing Austria because he was Jewish, and in 1939, he settled in Britain, where he worked as floor manager at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London. When Hungary entered the Second World War on the side of the Germans in 1941, Deutsch was interned for some weeks as an " enemy alien". Attallah, Naim
"No Longer With Us: André Deutsch"
(including interview with Deutsch from ''Singular Encounters''), quartetbooks.wordpress.com, 5 July 2010. After having learned the business of publishing while working for Francis Aldor (Aldor Publications, London), with whom he had been interned on the Isle of Man and who had introduced him to the industry, Deutsch left Aldor's employment after a few months to continue his burgeoning publishing career with the firm of Nicholson & Watson. After the war Deutsch founded his first company, Allan Wingate, but after a few years was forced out by one of his directors, Anthony Gibb. André Deutsch Limited began trading in 1952. His small but influential publishing house was active until the 1990s, and included books by

Jack Kerouac Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian ...

, Wole Soyinka, Earl Lovelace,

Norman Mailer Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American writer, journalist and filmmaker. In a career spanning more than six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least ...

, George Mikes, V. S. Naipaul, Ogden Nash, Eric Williams, Andrew Robinson, Philip Roth,

Art Spiegelman Itzhak Avraham ben Zeev Spiegelman ( ; born February 15, 1948), professionally known as Art Spiegelman, is an American cartoonist, editor, and comics advocate best known for his graphic novel ''Maus''. His work as co-editor on the comics magazin ...

John Updike John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth Tar ...

Margaret Atwood Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian novelist, poet, literary critic, and an inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight chi ...

, Charles Gidley Wheeler, Helene Hanff, Peter Benchley, Leon Uris, Molly Keane, Michael Rosen,

Quentin Blake Sir Quentin Saxby Blake (born 16 December 1932) is an English cartoonist, caricaturist, illustrator and children's writer. He has illustrated over 300 books, including 18 written by Roald Dahl, which are among his most popular works. For his l ...

, John Cunliffe, and Ludwig Bemelmans. Deutsch employed dedicated editor Diana Athill, who in 1952 was a founding director of the publishing company that was given his name (and who in her memoir ''Stet'' described him as "possibly the most difficult man in London"). A number of book series were established including The Language Library, Grafton Books (works on librarianship, bibliography and book collecting) and the Introduces guides. In the 1989 Queen's Birthday Honours, Deutsch was appointed a CBE. Deutsch died in London on 11 April 2000, aged 82.

In popular culture

Author John le Carré based his recurring character Toby Esterhase on Deutsch, both in physical appearance and in replicating Deutsch's unique manner of speech:

Current imprint

The name "André Deutsch" became an imprint of

Carlton Publishing Group Welbeck Publishing Group, formerly Carlton Publishing Group, is a London-based independent book publisher of fiction, narrative and illustrated non-fiction, as well as gift and children's books. Established in 2019 by Executive Directors Mark S ...

, which purchased the company from Video Collection International Plc in 2000.

References

External links

André Deutsch website

André Deutsch Collection
at Oxford Brookes University
André Deutsch Publishing Archive at the McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa
{{DEFAULTSORT:Deutsch, Andre 1917 births 2000 deaths 20th-century British businesspeople 20th-century British Jews British book publishing company founders British people of Hungarian-Jewish descent Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Hungarian emigrants to the United Kingdom Hungarian Jews Jewish emigrants from Austria after the Anschluss to the United Kingdom People from Budapest People interned in the Isle of Man during World War II

Biography

In popular culture

Current imprint

See also

References

Further reading

External links