Eland Books is an independent London-based
publishing
Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...
house founded in 1982 with the aim of republishing and reviving classic
travel books that have fallen out of print over time.
Its list currently runs to around 160 titles and is highly regarded by critics and book reviewers. Eland authors include:
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Nigel Barley (anthropologist)
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Nicolas Bouvier
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Evilya Celebi
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Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 (Winston Churchill in the Second World War, ...
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E.M. Forster
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Martha Gellhorn
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Lucie, Lady Duff-Gordon
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W.H. Hudson
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Arthur Koestler
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Peter Levi
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Norman Lewis (author)
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Gavin Maxwell
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Peter Mayne
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Mary Wortley Montagu
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (née Pierrepont; 15 May 168921 August 1762) was an English people, English Aristocracy (class), aristocrat, medical pioneer, writer, and poet. Born in 1689, Lady Mary spent her early life in England. In 1712, Lady Ma ...
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Jan Morris
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Dervla Murphy
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Irfan Orga
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Tony Parker
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Dilys Powell
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Jonathan Raban
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Leonard Woolf
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Ronald Wright
Eland began from an office in the attic of John Hatt, a former magazine travel editor, in a Victorian end-of-terrace house at 53 Eland Road, in
Battersea, south-west London.
It is run today by former travel guidebook authors
Barnaby Rogerson and his wife Rose Baring. Although its list has diversified into
biography
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curri ...
and
fiction
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying character (arts), individuals, events, or setting (narrative), places that are imagination, imaginary or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent ...
, the majority of the titles remain tales of travel.
Rogerson explained that Eland's mission is "to celebrate the diversity of the world, offering up 'anthropology-lite' under the blanket cover of preserving the best travel writing as well as to preserve the stories about past societies that have been destroyed by the modern world – precious little building blocks of other ways in which to live, from which a better world may one day be constructed by our heirs."
[Interview with Barnaby Rogerson, 24 November 2016.]
"Eland offers an armchair way of getting to know our fellow earthlings", added co-publisher Rose Baring.
See also
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:Eland Books books
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Naples '44
References
External links
Eland Books
{{Authority control
Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom
Publishing companies established in 1982
British companies established in 1982