The
Introducing... series, like the
For Beginners series, has its origins in two Spanish-language books,
Cuba para principiantes (1960) and
Marx para principiantes (1972) by the Mexican political cartoonist and writer
Rius, pocket books which put their content over in a humorous comic book way but with a serious underlying purpose. An English-language version of the first book was published in 1970 by
Leviathan Press of San Francisco and
Pathfinder Press of New York, to no particularly great impact. However, when
Richard Appignanesi edited the first English edition of
Marx for Beginners (1976) for the London-based
Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, of which he was a co-founding member with
Glenn Thompson and others, it was soon clear that the collective had a hit on their hands. With a successful format identified, further "
... for Beginners" titles soon began to appear. The line's most enduring titles, all published during this period, were
Marx for Beginners (1976),
Freud for Beginners (1979),
Einstein for Beginners (1979), and
Darwin for Beginners (1982). In the early 1980s schism arose over questions of control after some members of the
cooperative sold U.S. rights to part of the
For Beginners series to
Pantheon Books and the Cooperative officially disbanded in 1984. In 1992, Richard Appignanesi, who had been the first editor in London for the series and had also written several of the titles, co-created the new London-based publisher
Icon Books, under whose imprint he republished several of the
For Beginner titles and continued to publish and expand a new version of the series. Meanwhile, Glenn Thompson, who, since 1987, had continued the
For Beginners through his New York-based
Writers and Readers Publishing, Inc., also established the London-based
Writers and Readers Limited in 1992, to protect his own continuation of the series. These two publishers continued their series in several cases commissioning new authors to create alternate books to those being published by the other, leading to a number of examples where the two series were publishing two different books under the same title. The situation was eventually resolved in 1999 by the Icon series being rebranded as the
Introducing... series, with titles starting with that word instead of ending "For Beginners". Beginning in 2008, Icon's new titles and reissues played down the "Introducing..." to the level of a series name, and the titles were instead prominently subtitled "A Graphic Guide" (such as
Introducing the Holocaust). In 2011, a second "Introducing..." series was launched with the subtitle "Practical Guides" focusing on topics within business, psychology and counselling. ==Reception==