Thames & Hudson (sometimes T&H for brevity) is a publisher of illustrated books in all visually creative categories: art, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and the performing arts. It also publishes books on archaeology, history, and popular culture.
Headquartered in London, it has a sister company in New York City, and subsidiaries in Melbourne, Singapore, and Hong Kong. In Paris it has a sister company, Éditions Thames & Hudson, and a subsidiary called Interart which distributes English-language books. The Thames & Hudson group currently employs approximately 150 staff in London and approximately 65 more around the world.
The publishing company was founded in 1949 by Walter and Eva Neurath, who aimed to make the world of art and the research of top scholars available to a wider public. The company's name reflects its international presence, particularly in London and New York. It remains an independent, family-owned company, and is one of the largest publishers of illustrated books, with over 2,000 titles in print.
History
Walter Neurath
Walter Neurath (1903–1967) was a British publisher, the co-founder in 1949, with his wife, Eva Neurath, of Thames & Hudson.
Early life
Neurath was born in Josefstädterstrasse, Vienna, Austria on the 1st October 1903, the only child of Alois Ne ...
was born in Vienna in 1903, and ran an art gallery and published illustrated books there. In 1938, he left for London, where he initially worked as production director of Adprint, a London book-packaging company established by fellow Viennese émigré Wolfgang Foges. While at Adprint, Neurath designed and produced the hardback
King Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.
Neurath and Foges helped pioneer the concept of book packaging and co-edition publishing, in which books are conceived, commissioned, and produced, and then sold to publishers in different markets, countries, and languages, in order to create large print-runs and thereby lower costs.
Wishing to take book packaging and international publication further, and recognizing the need to defray the high production costs of illustrated books, in 1949 Neurath established his own publishing house, establishing offices in London and New York, and named the company Thames & Hudson to indicate it would publish in both British and North American markets, with reference to the
River Thames
The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, se ...
and the
Hudson River
The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between Ne ...
. Eva Feuchtwang (later
Eva Neurath
Eva Urvasi Neurath (née Itzig; 22 August 1908 – 27 December 1999) was a British publisher, the co-founder in 1949, with her husband, Walter Neurath, of Thames & Hudson.
Biography
She was born in Berlin, the youngest of Rudolf Itzig, a Jewish c ...
), who had arrived with her second husband in London from Berlin in 1939, was co-founder; she married Neurath in 1950 following the death of his wife. Neurath's stated intention with his new publishing company was to create a "museum without walls", a way of bringing art to the masses at a price they could afford.
Thames & Hudson published ten titles in its first year of 1950, including ''English Cathedrals'' with photographs by
Martin Hürlimann Martin Hürlimann (12 November 1897 in Zürich – 4 March 1984 in Zürich) was a Swiss publisher, better known in the English-speaking world as a photographer.
Following successful completion, at Frauenfeld, of his school career, Hürlimann went ...
, and Albert Einstein’s ''Out of My Later Years''.
Increasing the number of titles published year over year, by 1956 Thames & Hudson had outgrown its
High Holborn
High Holborn ( ) is a street in Holborn and Farringdon Without, Central London, which forms a part of the A40 route from London to Fishguard. It starts in the west at the eastern end of St Giles High Street and runs past the Kingsway and S ...
offices and moved to
Bloomsbury Street
Bloomsbury Street is a street in the Bloomsbury district of the London Borough of Camden that runs from Gower Street in the north to the junction of New Oxford Street and Shaftesbury Avenue in the south.
Listed buildings
Bloomsbury Street cont ...
just off Bedford Square, which was at the time the centre of London book publishing. Remaining at that address for 43 years, it moved back to High Holborn in 1999.
In 1958, Thames & Hudson launched one of its best-known series, the '' World of Art''. Pocket-sized and with black spines, the series grew to 49 titles within seven years, and has currently produced over 300 titles.
Other major series have included ''Ancient People and Places'', edited by archaeologist Glyn Daniel, which eventually included over 100 titles, and the large-format ''Great Civilizations'' series, published from 1961, featuring contributions by Alan Bullock,
Asa Briggs
Asa Briggs, Baron Briggs (7 May 1921 – 15 March 2016) was an English historian. He was a leading specialist on the Victorian era, and the foremost historian of broadcasting in Britain. Briggs achieved international recognition during his lon ...
John Julius Norwich
John Julius Cooper, 2nd Viscount Norwich, (15 September 1929 – 1 June 2018), known as John Julius Norwich, was an English popular historian, travel writer, and television personality.
Background
Norwich was born at the Alfred House Nursing ...
and others.
Walter Neurath died in 1967 at the age of 63, and Eva Neurath became chairman of the company until her death 1999. Walter's son Thomas, who with his sister Constance had joined the company in 1961, became managing director upon Walter's death; Constance later served as art director for several decades. Both Thomas and Constance are on the company's board of directors, and as of 2022 Thomas's daughters Johanna and Susanna are as well.
Ian Mackenzie-Kerr
Ian Mackenzie-Kerr (18 November 1929 – 27 May 2005) was a British book designer. He worked for Thames & Hudson for almost fifty years, where he was instrumental in transforming the appearance of their books.Alan PowersIan Mackenzie-Kerr: Tha ...
(1929–2005), a book designer with T&H for nearly 50 years
* '' World of Art'', Thames & Hudson's signature book series on the arts