Longman (Publisher)

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Longman is the first name of a publisher founded in London in 1724 and it still exists today as an imprint of Pearson Education . Over the centuries it had various names, including Longmans, Green & Company from 1880 to 1959 .

history

The publishing house was founded by the bookseller Thomas Longman (1699–1755) in London. He married the daughter of the bookseller John Osborn, who published Ephraim Chamber's Cyclopaedia, and was apprenticed to him from 1716 onwards. In 1724 he acquired the estate of the publisher William Taylor (first publisher of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe ), who had two bookstores in London (Black Swan, Ship, both in Paternoster Row, where the publisher was located in the future), which Longman took over . Longman was one of six booksellers who edited the Samuel Johnson Dictionary . After Longman's death, his nephew of the same name took over and at the beginning of the 19th century other partners were taken on, for example Thomas Brown in 1811 (died 1869), who started as an apprentice at the publishing house in 1794.

From 1799 they published the English Grammar by Lindley Murray , which then sold 50,000 times a year, and 1800 Historical and Miscellaneous Questions for the Use of Young People by the teacher Richmal Mangnall (1769-1820), which had eighty-four editions by 1857. In addition, the works of William Wordsworth , Robert Southey , Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Walter Scott were published and they were the London agents of the Edinburgh Review , founded in 1802 , which they took over entirely in 1826. From 1802 to 1819 the encyclopedia of the teacher and pastor Abraham Rees (1743-1825) appeared in 39 volumes and 6 illustrated volumes. In 1829 the Cabinet Encyclopaedia followed, edited by Dionysius Lardner, and in 1832, the Commercial Dictionary by John Ramsay McCulloch . In the 1840s they had success with the history works of Thomas Macaulay . From 1842, publishers were Thomas Longman (1804–1879) and William Longman (1813–1877), who himself published historical books.

In 1863 they took over the publishing house from John William Parker, to which Fraser's Magazine belonged and with which John Stuart Mill came to the publishing house. In 1890 they took over the Rivington publishing house, founded in 1711. From 1880 to 1959 they were called Longmans, Green and Company.

In 1940 the publishing house on Paternoster Row and its books were bombed. In 1948 they became a public company and in 1968 they were acquired by Pearson (then owner of Penguin and the Financial Times). The last representative of the Longman family in the publishing house, Mark Longman, died in 1972. The publishing house was imprinted by Pearson mainly for the market of textbooks for English as a foreign language (English Language Teaching). Competitors are in particular (outside of Pearson) Macmillan Publishers , Oxford University Press , Express Publishing .

Name of the publisher

  • 1724 T. Longman
  • 1725 J. Osborn and T. Longman
  • 1734 T. Longman
  • 1745 T. Longman and T. Shewell
  • 1747 T. Longman
  • 1753 T. and T. Longman
  • 1755, M. and T. Longman
  • 1755 T. Longman
  • 1793 TN Longman. Also: T. Longman
  • 1797 Messrs. Longman and Rees
  • 1799 TN Longman and O. Rees
  • 1800 Longman and Rees
  • 1804 Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme
  • 1811 Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown
  • 1823 Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green
  • 1825 Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green
  • 1832 Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longmans
  • 1838 Longman, Orme, Brown, Green and Longmans
  • 1840 Longman, Orme & Co.
  • 1841 Longman, Brown & Co.
  • 1842 Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans
  • 1856 Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans and Roberts
  • 1859 Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts
  • 1862 Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts and Green
  • 1865 Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer
  • 1880 Longmans, Green & Co.
  • 1926 Longmans, Green & Co. (Ltd.)
  • 1959 Longmans
  • 1969 Longman

literature

  • Asa Briggs, A history of Longmans and their books. London: British Library, 2008
  • Asa Briggs: Longman family (1724–1972), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online), 2004

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A. Briggs, A history of Longmans and their books. London: British Library, 2008: Appendix 2.