Faber and Faber began as a firm in 1929, but originated in the Scientific Press, owned by
Sir Maurice and Lady Gwyer. The Scientific Press derived much of its income from the weekly magazine
The Nursing Mirror. The Gwyers' desire to expand into trade publishing led them to
Geoffrey Faber, a fellow of
All Souls College, Oxford; they founded
Faber and Gwyer in 1925. After four years,
The Nursing Mirror was sold and Geoffrey Faber and the Gwyers agreed to go their separate ways. Faber selected the company name of Faber and Faber, although there was no other Faber involved. T. S. Eliot, who had been suggested to Faber by
Charles Whibley, had left Lloyds Bank in London to join Faber as a literary adviser; in the first season, the firm issued his
Poems 1909–1925. In addition, the catalogues from the early years included books by
Ezra Pound,
Jean Cocteau,
Herbert Read,
Max Eastman,
George Rylands,
John Dover Wilson,
Geoffrey Keynes,
Forrest Reid,
Charles Williams, and
Vita Sackville-West. In 1928, Faber and Faber published its first commercial success,
Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man. The book was at first published anonymously; the author's name,
Siegfried Sassoon, was added to the title page for the second impression. Over the next six months, it was reprinted eight times.
Role in publishing Poetry was originally the most renowned part of the Faber list, with
W. H. Auden,
Stephen Spender, and
Louis MacNeice joining
Ezra Pound,
Marianne Moore,
Wyndham Lewis,
John Gould Fletcher,
Roy Campbell,
James Joyce,
David Jones (artist-poet) and
Walter de la Mare being published under T. S. Eliot's aegis. Under Geoffrey Faber's chairmanship, the board in 1929 included Eliot, Richard de la Mare, Charles Stewart, and
Frank Vigor Morley. The firm's art director was
Berthold Wolpe. Faber published biographies,
memoirs, fiction, poetry, political and religious essays, art and architecture monographs,
children's books, and an ecology list. It also published Eliot's literary review,
The Criterion. Eliot rejected two books by
George Orwell, ''A Scullion's Diary
(the original version of Down and Out in Paris and London) and Animal Farm''.
Lawrence Durrell,
Robert Lowell,
Ted Hughes,
Sylvia Plath,
W. S. Graham,
Philip Larkin,
P. D. James,
Tom Stoppard, and
John Osborne. The firm increased its investment in contemporary drama, including plays by three Nobel Laureates:
Harold Pinter,
Samuel Beckett, and
T. S. Eliot. Other playwrights subsequently joined Faber, including
Alan Ayckbourn,
Alan Bennett,
Brian Friel,
Tony Harrison,
David Hare,
Frank McGuinness, and
Timberlake Wertenbaker.
Today Modern writers such as
Kazuo Ishiguro,
Peter Carey,
Orhan Pamuk, and
Barbara Kingsolver also joined Faber. In addition, Faber has published the translated work of prominent novelists and poets including
Milan Kundera,
Thomas Bernhard,
Günter Grass,
Nikos Kazantzakis,
Wisława Szymborska,
Mario Vargas Llosa, and
Czesław Miłosz. Having published the theatrical works of Samuel Beckett for several years, the company acquired the rights to the remainder of his oeuvre from the publishing house of
John Calder in 2007. Faber announced in October 2011 that
Jarvis Cocker, lead singer of the band
Pulp, would be joining as editor-at-large, an appointment similar to one held by
Pete Townshend of
The Who in the 1980s. Works republished in the imprint have included items from the
Mass-Observation archives, and works by
John Betjeman,
Angus Wilson,
A. J. P. Taylor,
H. G. Wells,
Joyce Cary,
Nina Bawden,
Jean Genet,
P. H. Newby,
Louis MacNeice,
John Carey,
F. R. Leavis,
Jacob Bronowski,
Jan Morris, and
Brian Aldiss. In 2009, Faber Finds began to release
e-books. Faber's American arm was sold in 1998 to
Farrar, Straus and Giroux ("FSG"), where it remained as an imprint focused on arts, entertainment, media, and popular culture. In February 2015, Faber announced the end of its partnership with FSG. In June 2012, to coincide with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, Faber launched a website – Sixty Years in Sixty Poems. Commissioned for The Space – the new digital arts platform developed by the Arts Council in partnership with the BBC – Sixty Years in Sixty Poems took the poems from Poet Laureate
Carol Ann Duffy's anthology, Jubilee Lines, and interpreted them using actors' recordings, sound-based generative design, and archive film footage. ==Faber Academy==