Rex Collings (18 June 1925 – 23 May 1996) was an English publisher who specialized in books relating to

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

and children's books. He ensured the publication of Wole Soyinka's plays, and was the first to publish '' Watership Down'' (1972) by

Richard Adams Richard George Adams (9 May 1920 – 24 December 2016) was an English novelist and writer of the books '' Watership Down'', '' Maia'', '' Shardik'' and '' The Plague Dogs''. He studied modern history at university before serving in the British ...

Isabel Quigly Isabel Madeleine Quigly FRSL (17 September 1926 – 14 September 2018) was a writer, translator and film critic. Biography She was born in Ontaneda, Spain, and educated at Godolphin School, Salisbury and Newnham College, Cambridge. In her ear ...

"Obituary: Rex Colling"s
''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publishe ...

'', 7 June 1996. Collings started at

Penguin Penguins ( order Sphenisciformes , family Spheniscidae ) are a group of aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is found north of the Equator. Highly adapt ...

before moving to

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...

, where he established the

Three Crowns Series 3 is a number, numeral, and glyph. 3, three, or III may also refer to: * AD 3, the third year of the AD era * 3 BC, the third year before the AD era * March, the third month Books * '' Three of Them'' (Russian: ', literally, "three"), a 190 ...

for books on African subjects. He then moved to

Methuen Methuen may refer to: *Methuen (surname) *Methuen, Massachusetts, a U.S. city **Methuen High School **Methuen Mall *Baron Methuen, a British title of nobility *Methuen Cove, South Orkney Islands *Methuen Publishing, Methuen & Co. Ltd., a British p ...

before setting up his own publishing company, Rex Collings Ltd. He risked his own money in publishing '' Watership Down'', which around thirty publishers had turned down.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Collings, Rex 1925 births 1996 deaths English book publishers (people) 20th-century English businesspeople