Secker and Warburg
Encyclopedia
Harvill Secker is a British publishing company formed in 2004 from the merger of Secker and Warburg and the Harvill Press.

Secker and Warburg was formed in 1936 from a takeover of Martin Secker
Martin Secker
Martin Secker , born Percy Martin Secker Klingender, was a London publisher who was responsible for producing the work of a distinguished group of literary authors, including D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Norman Douglas, and Henry James...

, which was in receivership, by Fredric Warburg
Fredric Warburg
Fredric John Warburg was an English publisher best known for his association with the British author George Orwell...

 and Roger Senhouse
Roger Senhouse
Roger Henry Pocklington Senhouse was an English publisher and translator, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group of writers, intellectuals, and artists...

. The firm became renowned for its political stance, being both anti-fascist
Anti-fascism
Anti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...

 and anti-communist, a position that put them at loggerheads with the ethos of many intellectuals of the time.

When George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

 parted company with Communist Party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...

 sympathizer Victor Gollancz
Victor Gollancz
Sir Victor Gollancz was a British publisher, socialist, and humanitarian.-Early life:Born in Maida Vale, London, he was the son of a wholesale jeweller and nephew of Rabbi Professor Sir Hermann Gollancz and Professor Sir Israel Gollancz; after being educated at St Paul's School, London and taking...

 over The Road to Wigan Pier
The Road to Wigan Pier
The Road to Wigan Pier is a book by the British writer George Orwell, first published in 1937. The first half of this work documents his sociological investigations of the bleak living conditions amongst the working class in Lancashire and Yorkshire in the industrial north of England before World...

, it was to Secker & Warburg that he took his next book Homage to Catalonia
Homage to Catalonia
Homage to Catalonia is political journalist and novelist George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. The first edition was published in 1938. The book was not published in the United States until February 1952. The American edition had a preface...

. Thereafter they were to publish all of Orwell's work, including, after 18 months of rejections and setbacks, Animal Farm
Animal Farm
Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II...

. Orwell and Warburg later became intimate friends.

Secker & Warburg published other books by key figures of the anti-Stalinist left
Anti-Stalinist left
The anti-Stalinist left is an element of left-wing politics that is critical of Joseph Stalin's policies and the political system that developed in the Soviet Union under his rule...

, such as C. L. R. James
C. L. R. James
Cyril Lionel Robert James , who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J.R. Johnson, was an Afro-Trinidadian historian, journalist, socialist theorist and essayist. His works are influential in various theoretical, social, and historiographical contexts...

, Rudolf Rocker
Rudolf Rocker
Johann Rudolf Rocker was an anarcho-syndicalist writer and activist. A self-professed anarchist without adjectives, Rocker believed that anarchist schools of thought represented "only different methods of economy" and that the first objective for anarchists was "to secure the personal and social...

 and Boris Souvarine
Boris Souvarine
Boris Souvarine was an Imperial Russian-born French socialist, communist activist, essayist, and journalist.-Early years:...

, as well as works by Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford was an American historian, philosopher of technology, and influential literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer...

.

In February 1941 they launched a series of "long pamphlets" or "short books" called Searchlight Books
Searchlight Books
Searchlight Books was a series of pamphlets and short books edited by T. R. Fyvel and George Orwell. The series was published by Secker & Warburg....

, edited by George Orwell and T. R. Fyvel. The series was originally planned to include 17 books, but was discontinued after the publication of ten when bombing destroyed paper stocks.

With its financial position devastated by paper shortages during and after the war, Secker & Warburg were forced to join the Heinemann group of publishers
Heinemann (book publisher)
Heinemann is a UK publishing house founded by William Heinemann in Covent Garden, London in 1890. On William Heinemann's death in 1920 a majority stake was purchased by U.S. publisher Doubleday. It was later acquired by commemorate Thomas Tilling in 1961...

 in 1951. During the 1950s and 1960s Secker & Warburg were to publish the works of, amongst others, Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...

, Collette
Collette
Collette is a surname or given name, and may refer to:Surname* Buddy Collette , American jazz musician* Ned Collette, Australian singer/songwriter* Toni Collette , Australian actressGiven name...

, J.M. Coetzee, Alberto Moravia
Alberto Moravia
Alberto Moravia, born Alberto Pincherle was an Italian novelist and journalist. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation, and existentialism....

, Günter Grass
Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass is a Nobel Prize-winning German author, poet, playwright, sculptor and artist.He was born in the Free City of Danzig...

, Angus Wilson
Angus Wilson
Sir Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson, CBE was an English novelist and short story writer. He was awarded the 1958 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot and later received a knighthood for his services to literature.-Biography:Wilson was born in Bexhill, Sussex, England, to...

, Melvyn Bragg
Melvyn Bragg
Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg FRSL FRTS FBA, FRS FRSA is an English broadcaster and author best known for his work with the BBC and for presenting the The South Bank Show...

 and Julian Gloag, as well as the British Buddhist Lobsang Rampa
Lobsang Rampa
Cyril Henry Hoskin , more popularly known as Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, was a writer who claimed to have been a lama in Tibet before spending the second part of his life in the body of a British man. Hoskin described himself as the "host" of Tuesday Lobsang Rampa...

.

Heinemann was purchased by the Octopus Publishing Group in 1985; Octopus was purchased by Reed International (now Reed Elsevier
Reed Elsevier
Reed Elsevier is a publisher and information provider operating in the science, medical, legal, risk and business sectors. It is listed on several of the world's major stock exchanges. It is a FTSE 100 and FT500 Global company...

) in 1987. Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...

 bought the adult trade division of Reed Books in 1997. Five years later, Random House acquired the Harvill Press, founded in founded in 1946 by Manya Harari and Marjorie Villiers. Secker and Warburg merged with the Harvill Press in 2005 to become Harvill Secker.

Tom Rosenthal, chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...

, was head of Secker and Warburg from 1971 to 1984.
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