T. Fisher Unwin was the London publishing house founded by Thomas Fisher Unwin, husband of British Liberal politician Jane Cobden in 1882.
Unwin fashioned a "highly competitive company with a reputation for discovering and marketing promising new authors".Graham Law, "Unwin, T. Fisher", The Oxford Companion to the Book, Oxford University Press, 2010 (online edition). Retrieved 26 December 2023. The company published fiction series such as the Pseudonym Library and the Overseas Library through which promising new authors such as Joseph Conrad, John Galsworthy and W. Somerset Maugham could be "profitably marketed to a growing middle-class reading public" in the 1890s. In the years 1895-1898 Unwin published Joseph Conrad’s first novel Almayer’s Folly and his An Outcast of the Islands and Tales of Unrest; in 1897 it published Maugham's first novel Liza of Lambeth.
The company's list also included works by Henrik Ibsen,Ibsen T. Fisher Unwin, worldcat.org. Retrieved 28 December 2023. Friedrich Nietzsche,Nietzsche T. Fisher Unwin, worldcat.org. Retrieved 28 December 2023. H. G. Wells, Olive Schreiner,Olive Schreiner T. Fisher Unwin, worldcat.org. Retrieved 28 December 2023. W. B. Yeats, Ford Madox Ford, Sigmund Freud, Ouida and E. Nesbit.
T. Fisher Unwin employed a "skilful team"Owen Knowles and Gene M. Moore, eds., Unwin, "T (Thomas) Fisher", Oxford Reader’s Companion To Conrad, 2000; 2011 (online edition). Retrieved 26 December 2023. including Edward Garnett as reader (who recommended Almayer’s Folly for publication) and David Rice as chief salesman.
During much of the company's first two decades T. Fisher Unwin's office was located at Paternoster Square, LondonRome From The Earliest Times To The End Of The Republic, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1885, worldcat.org. Retrieved 28 December 2023. and in 1905 it relocated to 1 Adelphi Square, London (with a branch at Inselstrasse 20, Leipzig).J. B. Purvis, Through Uganda to Mount Elgon, London and Leipzig: T. Fisher Unwin, 1909, title page. Retrieved 27 December 2023.
Thomas Fisher Unwin's latterly more famous nephew Stanley Unwin started his career by working in his uncle's firm. Stanley Unwin purchased a controlling interest in the firm George Allen and Sons, and in 1914 established George Allen and Unwin, later to become Allen and Unwin.
Unwin retired to his home in Sussex in 1926, following which his publishing house merged with Ernest Benn Limited.
Book series
References
Further reading
Julie F. Codell, "T. Fisher Unwin", in: Patricia J. Anderson and Jonathan Rose, eds., British Literary Publishing Houses, 1820-1880, Detroit and London: Gale Research Inc., 1991 (Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 106), pp. 304-311 Frederick Nesta, "The Series as Commodity: Marketing T. Fisher Unwin’s Pseudonym and Autonym Libraries", in: John Spiers, ed., The Culture of the Publisher’s Series, Volume One, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, pp. 171–187 Philip Unwin, The Publishing Unwins, London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1972
External links Advertising poster for the Pseudonym and Autonym Library Series published by T. Fisher Unwin - artist: Aubrey Beardsley