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'Bodley Head' has been used as an imprint of Random House Children's Books since 1987. From April 2008 it will be revived as an adult non-fiction imprint within Random House's CCV division.

Contents

History

Relaunch

''The Book of Bodley Head Verse'' (1926)

Forthcoming titles

See also

Bibliography

External links

History

Originally 'John Lane and Elkin Mathews — The Bodley Head' was a partnership set up in 1887 by John Lane (1854–1925) and Elkin Mathews, to trade in antiquarian books in London. It took its name from a bust of Sir Thomas Bodley, the of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, above the shop door. Lane and Matthews began in 1894 to publish works of ‘stylish decadence’, including the notorious literary periodical ''The Yellow Book''. Possibly two of Bodley Head's most famous pre-Great War books were the two volume sets: ''Foundations of the Nineteenth Century'' (1910, with two reprints in 1912 and another in 1913, selling over fifty thousand copies), and ''Immanuel Kant'', both by Houston Stewart Chamberlain.
The Bodley Head became a private company in 1921 published some mainstream popular authors, such as Arnold Bennett and Agatha Christie, but ran into financial difficulties. It continued after 1936 backed by a consortium of Allen & Unwin, Jonathan Cape, and J. M. Dent. Allen Lane, John Lane's nephew who had inherited control, finally left to found Penguin Books.
Bought in 1957 by Ansbacher & Co., the imprint was still important in the 1970s when it was drawn into the Jonathan Cape/Chatto and Windus group. The firm was sold to Random House in 1987, who have published children's books under The Bodley Head name since.

Relaunch

April 2008 sees the launch of a new imprint within Random House's CCV division and a revival of the Bodley Head name. In its new incarnation The Bodley Head will be devoted to original non-fiction in all fields. Its two principal strands will be, on the one hand, books of scholarship in both the humanities and sciences and, on the other, books which contribute to the intellectual and cultural climate of our times.
Many of the authors have moved across from Jonathan Cape. These will include Roger Penrose, Norman Davies, Stephen Greenblatt, John D. Barrow, Ben Shephard and Misha Glenny. Others, such as Simon Schama, Nigel Hamilton, Dominique Moïsi, Douglas Rushkoff and Nathaniel Philbrick will be new to the imprint.

''The Book of Bodley Head Verse'' (1926)

Edited by J. B. Priestley. Poets included were:
Lascelles Abercrombie — A. E. — T. B. Aldrich — Kenneth Ashley — Maurice Baring — Aubrey Beardsley — Henry C. Beeching — Arthur Christopher Benson — Archibald Allan Bowman — Mary Brotherton — Emile Cammaerts — Ethel Clifford — Ernest Hartley Coleridge — Stephen Coleridge — Francis Coutts — Lord Curzon Of Kedleston — Olive Custance — John Davidson — Lord de Tabley — Lord Alfred Douglas — Ernest Dowson — Helen Parry Eden — Leolyn Louise Everett — Eugene Field — Darrell Figgis — Norman Gale — Richard Garnett — H. W. Garrod — Stephen Gwynn — John Hay — Alfred Hayes — F. R. Higgins — Katherine Tynan Hinkson — Edmond Holmes — Nora Hopper — Ford Madox Hueffer — E. Pauline Johnson — Herbert Jones — Frank Kendon — Richard Le Gallienne — Arthur E. J. Legge — R. C. Lehmann — Winifred Lucas — E. A. Mackintosh — Alice Meynell — Bernard Miall — Rosa Newmarch — Stephen Phillips — Marjorie L. C. Pickthall — Victor Plarr — Dollie Radford — Dorothy Una Ratcliffe — Ernest Rhys — Lady Margaret Sackville — Vita Sackville-West — Sir Owen Seaman — Leonard Shoobridge — Dora Sigerson — John Still — Arthur Stringer — John B. Tabb — Frederick Tennyson — Francis Thompson — Iris Tree — Emile Verhaeren — I. Henry Wallis — Rosamund Marriott Watson — Sir William Watson — Theodore Watts-Dunton — Margaret Woods

Forthcoming titles

''McMafia: Crime Without Frontiers'' — Misha Glenny (3 April 2008) —- A first-hand account of international organised crime and a critique of globalisation's dark side.
''Cosmic Imagery: Key Images in the History of Science'' —- John D. Barrow (3 April 2008) —- Professor of Cosmology John Barrow tells the story of science through its most influential images.
''Attila The Hun: Barbarian Terror and The Fall of the Roman Empire'' —- Christopher Kelly (3 April 2008) —- an exploration of Attila the Hun's role in the demise of the greatest empire the world had ever seen.

See also

★ Max Reinhardt

Bibliography

★ Stetz, Margaret; Lasmer, Mark Samuels (1990). England in the 1890s: Literary Publishing at the Bodley Head. Georgetown Univ Press. ISBN 0-87840-509-7.

External links

★ Archives of the Bodley Head Ltd at Reading University