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The Reprint Society
The Reprint Society, trading as ''World Books'', was a book club in the United Kingdom founded by Alan Bott in 1939 who also started the ''Book Society'', the ''Avalon Press'' and Pan Books. The club dominated the ''middle brow'' sector of the book club business in the U.K. until it was sold in 1966. Editorial Board The initial editorial board included: *Alan Bott *W.A.R. Collins of Collins *A. Dwye Evans of Heinemann *Rupert Hart-Davis of Jonathan Cape *Harold Macmillan of Macmillan *Harold Raymond of Chatto & Windus. First books The first six books offered were: *''Seven Pillars of Wisdom'' by T.E. Lawrence *''The Joyful Delaneys'' by Hugh Walpole *''The Yearling'' by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings *''Brazilian Adventure'' by Peter Fleming *''Rabble in Arms'' by Kenneth Roberts Possibly the first advert for the club, in ''The Times'', offered ''Seven Pillars of Wisdom'' in two volumes for three shillings and six pence (3/6s) per volume, bound in buckram and with a gilt stamped lea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alan Bott
Captain Alan John Bott (14 January 1893 – 17 September 1952) was a World War I flying ace who was credited with five aerial victories. He later became a journalist, editor and publisher who founded Pan Books.Shores ''et.al.'' (1990), p.82. Pre-war career Bott worked as journalist before and just after the outbreak of the war, serving as "special correspondent" of the ''Daily Chronicle'', based in Basle, Switzerland. He reported on the British air raid on the Zeppelin factory at Friedrichshafen on 21 November 1914, and travelled to the Swiss town of Romanshorn, on the opposite side of Lake Constance, to observe the German response, on one occasion going out into the middle of the lake on a boat to gain a closer look. Military service Bott returned to England in early 1915, and after training in the Inns of Court Officers' Training Corps he was commissioned as a second lieutenant (on probation) in the Royal Garrison Artillery on 22 July 1915. He was transferred to the Royal Fly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugh Walpole
Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE (13 March 18841 June 1941) was an English novelist. He was the son of an Anglican clergyman, intended for a career in the church but drawn instead to writing. Among those who encouraged him were the authors Henry James and Arnold Bennett. His skill at scene-setting and vivid plots, as well as his high profile as a lecturer, brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s but has been largely neglected since his death. After his first novel, ''The Wooden Horse'', in 1909, Walpole wrote prolifically, producing at least one book every year. He was a spontaneous story-teller, writing quickly to get all his ideas on paper, seldom revising. His first novel to achieve major success was his third, ''Mr Perrin and Mr Traill'', a tragicomic story of a fatal clash between two schoolmasters. During the First World War he served in the Red Cross on the Russian-Austrian front, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (founded in 1821) are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times'', which do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have only had common ownership since 1966. In general, the political position of ''The Times'' is considered to be centre-right. ''The Times'' is the first newspaper to have borne that name, lending it to numerous other papers around the world, such as '' The Times of India'', ''The New York Times'', and more recently, digital-first publications such as TheTimesBlog.com (Since 2017). In countries where these other titles are popular, the newspaper is often referred to as , or as , although the newspaper is of na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Book Club Associates
Book Club Associates (BCA) was a mail-order and online book selling company in the United Kingdom. It came to dominate the mail-order book-club business in the U.K. in the 1970s and 1980s through extensive advertising in Sunday newspaper colour supplements and elsewhere, and became the largest mail-order bookseller in the U.K. The firm collapsed in 2012. Origin BCA was established in 1966 and was jointly owned by W.H. Smith and American Doubleday of The Reprint Society and their book club ''World Books''. Business model The business model of the company was to encourage book buying in the retail marketplace by signing customers on to memberships of book selling syndicates, wherein they could buy mass market published books at a substantially reduced price rate compared to the same books' sale prices in high street retail outlets. The drawback was that in exchange for this reduced price, customers (or book club "members"), in joining a syndicate signed a legal contract agreein ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doubleday (publisher)
Doubleday is an American publishing company. It was founded as the Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897 and was the largest in the United States by 1947. It published the work of mostly U.S. authors under a number of imprints and distributed them through its own stores. In 2009 Doubleday merged with Alfred A. Knopf, Knopf Publishing Group to form the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, which is now part of Penguin Random House. In 2019, the official website presents Doubleday as an Imprint (trade name), imprint, not a publisher. History The firm was founded as Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897 by Frank Nelson Doubleday in partnership with Samuel Sidney McClure. McClure had founded the first U.S. newspaper syndicate in 1884 (McClure Syndicate) and the monthly ''McClure's Magazine'' in 1893. One of their first bestsellers was ''The Day's Work'' by Rudyard Kipling, a short story collection that Macmillan published in Britain late in 1898. Other authors published by the company in i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buckram
Buckram is a stiff cotton (occasionally linen or horse hair) cloth with a loose weave, often muslin. The fabric is soaked in a sizing agent such as wheat-starch paste, glue (such as PVA glue), or pyroxylin (gelatinized nitrocellulose, developed around 1910), then dried. When rewetted or warmed, it can be shaped to create durable firm fabric for book covers, hats, and elements of clothing. In the Middle Ages, "bokeram" (as the word was sometimes spelt in Middle English) designated a fine cotton cloth, not stiff. The etymology of the term remains uncertain; the ''Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...'' calls into question the commonly-mentioned derivation from the name of the city of Bokhara. Use in bookbinding In bookbinding, buck ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenneth Roberts (author)
Kenneth Lewis Roberts (December 8, 1885 – July 21, 1957) was an American writer of historical novels. He worked first as a journalist, becoming nationally known for his work with the ''Saturday Evening Post'' from 1919 to 1928, and then as a popular novelist. Born in Kennebunk, Maine, Roberts specialized in regionalist historical fiction, often writing about his native state and its terrain and also about other upper New England states and scenes. For example, the main characters in ''Arundel'' and ''Rabble in Arms'' are from Kennebunkport (then called Arundel), the main character in ''Northwest Passage'' is from Kittery, Maine and has friends in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and the main character in ''Oliver Wiswell'' is from Milton, Massachusetts. Early life Roberts graduated in 1908 from Cornell University, where he wrote the lyrics for two Cornell fight songs, including ''Fight for Cornell''. He was also a member of the Quill and Dagger society. He was later awarded h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Fleming (writer)
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Peter Fleming (31 May 1907 – 18 August 1971) was a British adventurer, journalist, soldier and travel writer."Obituary Colonel Peter Fleming, Author and explorer". ''The Times'', 20 August 1971 p14 column F. He was the elder brother of Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond. Early life Peter Fleming was one of four sons of the barrister and Member of Parliament (MP) Valentine Fleming, who was killed in action in 1917, having served as MP for Henley from 1910. Fleming was educated at Eton, where he edited the ''Eton College Chronicle''. The Peter Fleming Owl (the English meaning of "Strix", the name under which he later wrote for '' The Spectator'') is still awarded every year to the best contributor to the ''Chronicle''. He went on from Eton to Christ Church, Oxford, and graduated with a first-class degree in English. Fleming was a member of the Bullingdon Club during his time at Oxford. On 10 December 1935 he married the actress Celia Johnson ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (August 8, 1896 – December 14, 1953) accessed December 8, 2014. was an American writer who lived in rural and wrote novels with rural themes and settings. Her best known work, '' The Yearling'', about a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 and was later made into [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seven Pillars Of Wisdom
''Seven Pillars of Wisdom'' is the autobiographical account of the experiences of British Army Colonel T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), of serving as a military advisor to Bedouin forces during the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire of 1916 to 1918. It was completed in February 1922, but first published in December 1926. Title and dedication The title comes from the Book of Proverbs; "Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars" () (King James Version). Before the First World War, Lawrence had begun work on a scholarly book about seven great cities of the Middle East, to be called ''Seven Pillars of Wisdom''. It was incomplete when war broke out and Lawrence stated that he destroyed the manuscript. He used his original title for the later work. The book had to be rewritten three times, once following the loss of the manuscript on a train at Reading railway station. From ''Seven Pillars'', "... and then lost all but the Introduction and d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pan Books
Pan Books is a publishing imprint that first became active in the 1940s and is now part of the British-based Macmillan Publishers, owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group of Germany. Pan Books began as an independent publisher, established in 1944 by Alan Bott, previously known for his memoirs of his experiences as a flying ace in the First World War. The Pan Books logo, showing the ancient Greek god Pan playing pan-pipes, was designed by Mervyn Peake. A few years after it was founded, Pan Books was bought out by a consortium of several publishing houses, including Macmillan, Collins, Heinemann, and, briefly, Hodder & Stoughton. It became wholly owned by Macmillan in 1987. Pan specialised in publishing paperback fiction and, along with Penguin Books, was one of the first popular publishers of this format in the UK. Many popular authors saw their works given paperback publication through Pan, including Ian Fleming, whose James Bond series first appeared in pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chatto & Windus
Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Penguin Random House that was formerly an independent book publishing company founded in London in 1855 by John Camden Hotten. Following Hotten's death, the firm would reorganize under the names of his business partner Andrew Chatto and poet William Edward Windus. The company was purchased by Random House in 1987 and is now a sub-imprint of Vintage Books within the Penguin UK division. History The firm developed out of the publishing business of John Camden Hotten, founded in 1855. After his death in 1873, it was sold to Hotten's junior partner Andrew Chatto (1841–1913), who took on the poet William Edward Windus (1827-1910), son of the patron of J. M. W. Turner, Benjamin Godfrey Windus (1790-1867), as partner. Chatto & Windus published Mark Twain, W. S. Gilbert, Wilkie Collins, H. G. Wells, Wyndham Lewis, Richard Aldington, Frederick Rolfe (as Fr. Rolfe), Aldous Huxley, Samuel Beckett, the "unfinished" novel '' Weir of Hermiston'' (1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
