Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd (often shortened to
W&N or
Weidenfeld) is a British publisher of fiction and reference books. It is a division of the
Orion Publishing GroupOrion Publishing Group Ltd. is a UK-based book publisher. It is owned by Hachette Livre. In 1998 Orion bought Cassell.-History:Full history of the group can be found on Orion Publishing Group is owned by -Imprints:...
.
History
Founded in the late 1940s by
George WeidenfeldArthur George Weidenfeld, Baron Weidenfeld, GBE is a British publisher, philanthropist, and newspaper columnist. He was born in Vienna, Austria.Weidenfeld attended the University of Vienna and the city's Diplomatic College...
and
Nigel NicolsonNigel Nicolson OBE was a British writer, publisher and politician.-Biography:Nicolson was the son of the writers Sir Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West; he had a brother Ben, later an art historian...
, Weidenfeld & Nicolson established a solid reputation by publishing controversial landmark titles like
Vladimir NabokovVladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
's
LolitaLolita is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, first written in English and published in 1955 in Paris and 1958 in New York, and later translated by the author into Russian...
(1959) and
Portrait of a MarriagePortrait of a Marriage: Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson is the 1973 biography of writer and gardener Vita Sackville-West compiled by her son Nigel Nicolson from her journals and letters...
(1973), Nicolson's biography of his mother,
Vita Sackville-WestThe Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson, CH , best known as Vita Sackville-West, was an English author, poet and gardener. She won the Hawthornden Prize in 1927 and 1933...
. In its early years Weidenfeld also published nonfiction works by, among others,
Isaiah BerlinSir Isaiah Berlin OM, FBA was a British social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas of Russian-Jewish origin, regarded as one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century and a dominant liberal scholar of his generation...
, Hugh Trevor-Roper, and
Rose MacaulayDame Emilie Rose Macaulay, DBE was an English writer. She published thirty-five books, mostly novels but also biographies and travel writing....
, and novels by
Mary McCarthyMary McCarthy may refer to:*Mary McCarthy , novelist, critic, and memoirist*Mary McCarthy , former CIA employee accused of leaking information...
and
Saul BellowSaul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
. This was followed in subsequent years by a host of titles by world leaders and historians, along with contemporary fiction and glossy illustrated books.
Weidenfeld was one of Orion's first acquisitions after the group's founding in 1991, and formed the core of its offerings. Weidenfeld imprints originally included
J. M. DentJoseph Malaby Dent was a British book publisher who produced the Everyman's Library series.Dent was born in Darlington in what is now the Britaania public house. After a short and unsuccessful stint as an apprentice printer he took up bookbinding...
and
Everyman PaperbacksEveryman's Library is a series of reprinted classic literature currently published in hardback by Random House. It was originally an imprint of J. M. Dent , who continue to publish Everyman Classics in paperback.J. M. Dent and Company began to publish the series in 1906...
, and have expanded greatly since the Orion acquisition and Orion's acquisition in turn by
Hachette Livre-France:*Calmann-Lévy*Deux Coqs d'Or*Disney Hachette Edition*EDICEF*Editions 1*Editions du Chêne**E.P.A*Éditions Dunod*Editions Foucher*Editions Stock*Fayard**Editions Mille et Une Nuits**Editions Mazarine**Pauvert*Gautier-Languereau*Grasset...
in 1998.