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 as a partner the poet
William Edward Windus (1827–1910), son of the patron of J. M. W. Turner, Benjamin Godfrey Windus (1790–1867). 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 (1896) by
Robert Louis Stevenson, and the first translation into English of
Marcel Proust's novel
À la recherche du temps perdu (
Remembrance of Things Past,
C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, 1922), among others. In 1946, the company took over the running of the
Hogarth Press, founded in 1917 by
Leonard and
Virginia Woolf. It published broadly in the field of literature, including novels and poetry. It is not connected, except in the loosest historical fashion, with
Pickering & Chatto Publishers. Chatto & Windus became a
limited company in 1953, and it was active as an independent publishing house until 1969, when it merged with
Jonathan Cape.
Norah Smallwood was appointed to the board, and later succeeded Ian Parsons as chairman and
managing director in 1975, serving until her retirement in 1982. Chatto, along with Jonathan Cape and
Virago Press, were purchased by
Penguin Random House in 1987. As of 2019, Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Vintage Publishing UK. ==Book series==