Secker & Warburg Secker & Warburg was formed in 1935 from a takeover of
Martin Secker, which was in receivership, by
Fredric Warburg and
Roger Senhouse. The firm became renowned for its political stance, being both
anti-fascist and
anti-communist, a position that put them at loggerheads with the ethos of many intellectuals of the time. When
George Orwell parted company with
Communist Party sympathizer
Victor Gollancz over his editing of
The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), he took his next book
Homage to Catalonia to Secker & Warburg, who published it in 1938. They also published, after 18 months of rejections and setbacks,
Animal Farm (1945), and Orwell's subsequent books. Orwell and Warburg later became intimate friends. Secker & Warburg published other books by key figures of the
anti-Stalinist left, such as
Minty Alley, World Revolution, and
The Black Jacobins by
C. L. R. James,
Rudolf Rocker and
Boris Souvarine,
Red Spanish Notebook: the first six months of revolution and the civil war by Juan Ramón Breá and
Mary Stanley Low and works by
Lewis Mumford. In February 1941, the company launched a series of "long pamphlets" or "short books" called
Searchlight Books, edited by George Orwell and
T. R. Fyvel. The series was originally planned to include 17 books, but was discontinued after the publication of 10 when bombing destroyed paper stocks. With its financial position devastated by paper shortages during and after the war, Secker & Warburg were forced to join the
Heinemann group of publishers in 1951. During the 1950s and 1960s, Secker & Warburg published the works of, among others,
Simone de Beauvoir,
Colette,
J. M. Coetzee,
Alberto Moravia,
Günter Grass,
Angus Wilson,
Michael Moorcock,
Melvyn Bragg and
Julian Gloag, as well as the British Buddhist
Lobsang Rampa. Heinemann was purchased by the
Octopus Publishing Group in 1985; Octopus was purchased by
Reed International (now
Reed Elsevier) in 1987.
Random House bought the adult trade division of Reed Books in February 1997.
Tom Rosenthal (1935–2014), chairman of the
Institute of Contemporary Arts, was head of Secker & Warburg from 1971 to 1984.
Harvill Press The Harvill Press was founded in 1946 by
Manya Harari and Marjorie Villiers. The imprint was later acquired by the Glasgow-based publishing firm
William Collins and Sons, which in 1989, merged with the American publishers Harper & Row to form
HarperCollins. Under the leadership of
Christopher MacLehose, between 1998 and 2005, Harvill Press published a numbered series of books, known as the Leopard Series due to the series emblem (the initial series ran up to number 310 and was revived in 2020). In 1996, Harvill Press became independent following a management buyout. The firm was bought by Random House in 2002, and was merged with Secker & Warburg in 2005 to become Harvill Secker. , Harvill Secker is an imprint of Vintage Publishing UK. ==References==