Wednesday, July 30, 2014

A HUNDRED YEARS OF ALLEN & UNWIN


 On 4 August 1914, England declared war on Germany.  On the very same day a new book publisher by the name of George Allen & Unwin Ltd opened for business in London with Stanley Unwin at its head.

He bought an ailing publishing company called George Allen & Company and shrewdly added his name at the end, knowing that most booksellers in those days paid their monthly accounts alphabetically.

So came together the two names that one hundred years later make up today’s Australasian-based Allen & Unwin, with offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland and indeed London.

Today, Allen & Unwin publishes 250 new books each year including literary and commercial fiction, a broad range of general and non-fiction, including New Zealand, academic and professional titles and books for children and young adults.

Allen & Unwin is the ANZ agent for Atlantic Books and Corvus, Bloomsbury and A&C Black, Canongate, Faber & Faber, Granta and Portobello, Icon Books, Nicholas Brealey, Profile and Serpent’s Tail, Short Books, Nosy Crow and V&A.

To celebrate its centenary, the company is producing A Hundred Years of Allen & Unwin, a limited edition hardback gift by chairman Patrick Gallagher and executive director Paul Donovan, for its authors and staff, booksellers, media and friends.

In 1978, Allen & Unwin published its first book in Australia 

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