Pluto Press was set up in London by
Richard Kuper in 1969 to support and promote political debate and
activism. Its
Trotskyist agenda stemmed from its early association with the
International Socialists, which broadened to a wider revolutionary left in 1972 when
Nina Kidron and
Michael Kidron joined. Anne Benewick and Ric Sissons joined soon after, and the team eventually reached 16 in number. Pluto Press has been described as "one of the most influential socialist publishing houses of that time". and Patrick Kinnersley's
Hazards of Work. Series published during this period include: the ''Workers' Handbooks
; the Marxism Series
; Ideas in Action
; Militarism, State and Society
series; Pluto Plays
; Arguments for Socialism
; Pluto Crime
; Liberation Classics
in the 1980s; and the Big Red Diaries
. The most successful was the State of the World Atlas'' series by
Michael Kidron and
Ronald Segal – visual encapsulations of major social and political trends – which were created and produced by Pluto Press and published by
Pan Books. The target readership was reached by selling directly to trades unions, women's organisations and networks, student unions, and theatre audiences as well as through the network of radical bookshops that emerged in the 1970s. Pluto Press became a distributor and co-publisher of titles generated by Urizen Books and
South End Press in the US, and Ink Links in the UK, as well as distributor for Counter-Information Services,
History Workshop,
Feminist Review and others. A trade sales organisation, Volume Sales, was set up in partnership with
Allison & Busby, under the direction of Ric Sissons (who later ran Pluto Australia). New departures in publishing included working with
Max Stafford-Clark and the
Royal Court Theatre to encourage theatre-goers to read playscripts by printing programmes that included the entire play. In 1987, Pluto Press was bought by Roger van Zwanenberg and Norman Drake. Drake later sold his shares to van Zwanenberg. ==University of Michigan Press controversy==