Chatto & Windus

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Chatto & Windus
Chatto & Windus logo.jpg
Parent companyPenguin Random House
Founded1855; 166 years ago (1855)
FounderJohn Camden Hotten, Andrew Chatto, W. E. Windus
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Headquarters locationLondon, England
Official websitewww.penguin.co.uk/company/publishers/vintage/chatto-windus.html

Chatto & Windus was an independent book publishing company in London, founded in the Victorian era. It was purchased by Random House in 1987.

History[]

The firm developed out of the publishing business of John Camden Hotten, founded in 1855. After his death in 1873, it was sold to Hotten's junior partner Andrew Chatto (1841–1913), who took on the poet as partner. Chatto & Windus published Mark Twain, W. S. Gilbert, Wilkie Collins, H. G. Wells, Wyndham Lewis, Richard Aldington, Frederick Rolfe (as Fr. Rolfe), Aldous Huxley, Samuel Beckett, the "unfinished" novel Weir of Hermiston (1896) by Robert Louis Stevenson, and the first translation into English of Marcel Proust's novel À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, 1922), among others.

In 1946, the company took over the running of the Hogarth Press, founded in 1917 by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Active as an independent publishing house until 1969, when it merged with Jonathan Cape,[1] it published broadly in the field of literature, including novels and poetry. It is not connected, except in the loosest historical fashion, with Pickering & Chatto Publishers.

Chatto & Windus became a limited company in 1953.[2] Norah Smallwood was appointed to the board, and later succeeded Ian Parsons as chairman and managing director in 1975, serving until her retirement in 1982.

Chatto, along with Jonathan Cape and Virago Press were purchased by Penguin Random House in 1987.[3] As of 2019, Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Vintage Publishing UK.[4]

Book series[]

  • Chatto Curiosities of the British Street[5]
  • Dolphin Books[6]
  • Golden Library[7]
  • Landmark Library[8]
  • New Medieval Library, AKA Medieval Library[9]
  • The New Phoenix Library[10]
  • The Phoenix Library[11][12]
  • The Phoenix Living Poets[13]
  • St. Martin’s Library[14]
  • Zodiac Books[15]

References[]

  1. ^ "Chatto & Windus Ltd. Archive". University of Reading. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  2. ^ "Chatto and Windus Limited – overview". Companies House. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  3. ^ "Chatto & Windus ¦ Making Britain". Open University. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  4. ^ "VINTAGE: Chatto & Windus". Penguin Books. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  5. ^ Chatto Curiosities of the British Street (Chatto & Windus) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
  6. ^ Dolphin Books, owu.edu. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
  7. ^ Golden Library, owu.edu. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
  8. ^ Landmark Library, owu.edu. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
  9. ^ New Medieval Library, owu.edu. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
  10. ^ The New Phoenix Library (Chatto & Windus) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
  11. ^ The Phoenix Library (Chatto & Windus) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
  12. ^ Andrew Nash, "Sifting out 'Rubbish' in the Literature of the Twenties and Thirties: Chatto & Windus and the Phoenix Library", in: John Spiers, ed., The Culture of the Publisher's Series, vol. 1, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
  13. ^ The Phoenix Living Poets (Chatto & Windus) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
  14. ^ St. Martin’s Library, owu.edu. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
  15. ^ Zodiac Books, owu.edu. Retrieved 5 July 2020.

Further reading[]

  • Warner, Oliver, Chatto & Windus: A Brief Account of the Firm's Origin, History and Development, London: Chatto & Windus, 1973.
  • Knowlson, James, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
  • Sutherland, John, The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction, Stanford University Press: 1990, ISBN 0-8047-1842-3, p. 118.

External links[]

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