Chatto & Windus
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Parent company | Penguin Random House |
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Status | Acquired |
Founded | 1855 |
Founder | John Camden Hotten, Andrew Chatto, William Edward Windus |
Successor | Vintage Books |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Headquarters location | London, England |
Official website | penguin.co.uk/chatto-windus |
Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Penguin Random House that was formerly an independent book publishing company founded in London in 1855 by John Camden Hotten. Following Hotten's death, the firm would reorganize under the names of his business partner Andrew Chatto and poet William Edward Windus. The company was purchased by Random House in 1987 and is now a sub-imprint of Vintage Books within the Penguin UK division.
History[edit]
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 William Edward Windus (1827–1910), son of the patron of J. M. W. Turner, Benjamin Godfrey Windus (1790–1867), 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[edit]
- 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]
- Phoenix Library of Food and Drink[13]
- The Phoenix Living Poets[14]
- St Martin's Library[15]
- Zodiac Books[16]
References[edit]
- ^ "Chatto & Windus Ltd. Archive". University of Reading. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
- ^ "Chatto and Windus Limited – overview". Companies House. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
- ^ "Chatto & Windus ¦ Making Britain". Open University. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
- ^ "VINTAGE: Chatto & Windus". Penguin Books. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
- ^ Chatto Curiosities of the British Street (Chatto & Windus) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
- ^ Krygier, John. "Dolphin Books". Ohio Wesleyan University. A Series of Series: 20th-Century Publishers Book Series. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
- ^ Krygier, John. "Golden Library". Ohio Wesleyan University. A Series of Series: 20th-Century Publishers Book Series. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
- ^ Krygier, John. "Landmark Library". Ohio Wesleyan University. A Series of Series: 20th-Century Publishers Book Series. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
- ^ Krygier, John. "New Medieval Library". Ohio Wesleyan University. A Series of Series: 20th-Century Publishers Book Series. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
- ^ The New Phoenix Library (Chatto & Windus) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
- ^ The Phoenix Library (Chatto & Windus) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
- ^ 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.
- ^ Phoenix Library of Food and Drink, seriesofseries.com. Retrieved 17 May 2023.
- ^ The Phoenix Living Poets (Chatto & Windus) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
- ^ Krygier, John. "St. Martin's Library". Ohio Wesleyan University. A Series of Series: 20th-Century Publishers Book Series. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
- ^ Krygier, John. "Zodiac Books". Ohio Wesleyan University. A Series of Series: 20th-Century Publishers Book Series. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
Further reading[edit]
- 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.