George Allen & Unwin is a British publishing company formed in 1911 when Sir Stanley Unwin purchased a controlling interest in George Allen & Co. It established an Australian subsidiary in 1976. In 1990 Allen & Unwin was sold to HarperCollins, and the Australian branch was the subject of a management buy-out.
Rayner Unwin retired at the end of 1985, and the firm was amalgamated in 1986 with Bell & Hyman to form Unwin Hyman Ltd., with Robin Hyman as chief executive. From this time "Allen & Unwin" continued only as the name of the Australian subsidiary of Unwin Hyman. Rayner Unwin returned for a while as part-time chairman of Unwin Hyman, retiring again at the end of 1988. It was over the objections of Rayner Unwin, the largest shareholder, that in 1990 Hyman sold the firm to HarperCollins.[6][7] HarperCollins has since sold Unwin Hyman's academic book list to Routledge.
Unwin Books
When Allen & Unwin began publishing paperbacks in the 1960s they did so in an imprint Unwin Books - this mass market sell through subsidiary became a publisher in the nascent alternative culture of the 1960s through the publication of books on philosophy and politics including Marx, Trotsky, Freud, Alan Wood, Zen Buddhism and Yoga, and literature of the far east notably the Chinese translations of Arthur Waley, Russian and Indian writers and the work of Tolkien. Each book in the series was numbered and through the 60s each book contained a full list of the other titles numbering in excess of 80.
A separate numbered list Unwin University Book was launched in 1962 comprising academic titles beginning with Barbara Wootton's The Social Foundations of Wage Policy.
In the 1970s a further list was formed, Unicorn Books, around the posthumous publications of Tolkien, supported by a series of other fantasy works by other authors including Lord Dunsany.
In 2017, Allen & Unwin refused to publish the book Silent Invasion due to legal concerns that it "would be targeted by Beijing and its proxies in Australia."[8][9]
Allen & Unwin's Australian logo was designed by in-house designer Nada Backovic.[10]
Frank Arthur Mumby and Frances Helena Swan Stallybrass, From Swan Sonnenschein to George Allen & Unwin Ltd. London: Allen & Unwin, 1955. With an introduction by Dr. John Murray.
Philip Unwin, The Publishing Unwins (London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1972)
Rayner Unwin, George Allen and Unwin: A Remembrancer (Ludlow: Merlin Unwin, 1999)
Stanley Unwin, The Truth About a Publisher (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1960)
External links
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