George Allen & Unwin

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George Allen & Unwin
legal form Ltd.
founding 1914
resolution 1986
Reason for dissolution Merger to
Unwin & Hyman
Seat until 1986 London
Branch Allen & Unwin:
Crows Nest , Australia
management until 1968 Stanley Unwin (company founder)
1968–1986 Rayner Unwin
Branch publishing company
Website allenandunwin.com

George Allen & Unwin Ltd. was a British publisher based in London, which among other things published the works of JRR Tolkien .

history

Stanley Unwin took over on August 4, 1914 the majority in the publishing house George Allen & Co. Ltd., which was in financial difficulties. The company was founded in 1871 under the name George Allen & Sons and in 1911 after merging with Swan Sonnenschein into George Allen & Co. Ltd. been renamed. Unwin changed the name to George Allen & Unwin Ltd. and moved the company's headquarters to 40 Museum Street.

Stanley Unwin led the publishing house successfully by publishing the representatives of different, also controversial, political views. The publisher's best-known authors included Nobel Prize winners Bertrand Russell , Arthur Ransome , Thor Heyerdahl, and JRR Tolkien . Tolkien had been publishing with Allen & Unwin since 1937 when his first non-academic book, The Hobbit , appeared there. Even if Tolkien occasionally flirted with a change to another publisher for the successor, The Lord of the Rings , he ultimately remained loyal to Allen & Unwin, which was also due to the good relationship with Unwin's son Rayner .

After the death of Stanley Unwin in 1968, Rayner Unwin took over the management. Together with Tolkien's son Christopher , he campaigned for the publication of the Silmarillions and The History of Middle-earth after the author's death . Allen & Unwin later got financial problems and was finally forced to merge with Bell & Hyman in 1986 to form the new publisher Unwin & Hyman . Four years later this was taken over by HarperCollins , which is why today the rights to Tolkien's writings are located.

The management of the Australian branch of Allen & Unwin, founded in 1976, acquired the majority of the imprint Allen & Unwin from HarperCollins in 1990 and has existed as an independent publisher in Australia and New Zealand ever since.

The George Allen & Unwin Archives are kept in the Library of Reading University; Portions of correspondence between the publisher and Tolkien are owned by HarperCollins.

Publications (selection)

  • Sigmund Freud: The interpretation of dreams. George Allen & Unwin, London 1913, OCLC 669680941 .
  • Bertrand Russell: The Principles of Social Reconstruction. George Allen & Unwin, London 1916, OCLC 474864 .
  • Arthur Ransome: Six weeks in Russia in 1919. George Allen & Unwin, London 1919, OCLC 2127398 .
  • Hans O. Morgenthaler: Matahari; impressions of the Siamese Malayan jungle. George Allen & Unwin, London 1923, OCLC 422239789 .
  • JRR Tolkien: The hobbit, or, There and back again. George Allen & Unwin, London 1937, OCLC 1827184 .
  • Ludwig Goldscheider: El Greco. (Painting, Phaedo edition). George Allen & Unwin, London 1938, OCLC 718043383 .
  • Thor Heyerdahl: American Indians in the Pacific; the theory behind the Kon-Tiki expedition. George Allen & Unwin, London 1952, OCLC 7134565 .
  • JRR Tolkien: The lord of the rings. George Allen & Unwin, London 1954/55, OCLC 1487587 .

Sources and web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b Unwin, Sir Stanley ( Memento from January 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) on oxforddnb.com (biography, English)