Vienna After four years working in the family firm, acquiring routine business skills, in 1929 Neurath turned to full-time
publishing, with a strong interest in
printing and
typography. He joined the Verlag für Kulturforschung (‘publishing house for cultural research’), and Zinner Verlag, which published fiction and where, after six months, he was made production director. There he published a number of illustrated books, and German language translations of English and American books. The rise to power in
Germany of the
Nazi Party effectively closed the main German language market for this
Jewish firm which therefore decided to cease trading in 1935. For the next two years Neurath worked as an educational publisher, developing new illustration techniques and creating, as general editor, a series of illustrated textbooks for children designed as an educational counter-influence to Nazi ideology. The books had a strong democratic and anti-
totalitarian bias and were translated into seven foreign languages by like-minded publishers abroad. In 1937 Neurath was appointed manager of the Wilhelm Frick publishing house, where he continued to commission and publish both illustrated books on the arts and anti-Nazi
propaganda. However, on the occupation of Austria by the Nazis he was ordered to cease publishing immediately and a Nazi-approved
Commissar was appointed to run the company.
England Because of his anti-Nazi publishing activities, Neurath was soon on the
Gestapo lists and, after several near misses and a period in hiding, managed to escape to England on 1 June 1938, taking with him his second wife, Marianne. His sponsor for entry into England as an alien was Frances Margesson, wife of
Captain (later Viscount) Margesson; the Neuraths stayed with the Margessons at
Boddington, near
Rugby, for some five years and their son Thomas was born there. Neurath was offered work by a company called Adprint, run by a fellow refugee, Wolfgang Foges. He soon became the production manager designing and producing the successful
King Penguin series, effectively
Penguin's first hardcover books. Neurath went on to develop a more ambitious series called
Britain in Pictures, edited by
Walter J. Turner in which the illustrations were an integral part of a book, prominently placed together with the words to which they were related, rather than banishing them to the plates section elsewhere the book. The series combined skilful picture research with fine design and printing including significant texts from
George Orwell (
The English People),
Rose Macaulay (
Life among the English),
John Piper (
British Romantic Artists),
Michael Ayrton (
British Drawings), and
Jacquetta Hawkes (
Early Britain); the series eventually comprised more than 100 volumes. Neurath was not yet a
naturalised British citizen and was dispatched to an
internment camp on the
Isle of Man, alongside musicians later to become the
Amadeus Quartet and other distinguished and blameless European artists and intellectuals viewed as
enemy aliens. Happily, aware that the
Britain in Pictures series had considerable
propaganda value, a friendly civil servant, Richard Cowell, managed to get Neurath released rapidly and he was soon back at work, with eventual naturalization as a
British subject to follow. After
World War II Neurath stayed with Adprint until September 1949 when he founded
Thames and Hudson, contributing his life savings of £3000 to the new company's total capital of £7,000. His co-directors included his Adprint colleague Eva Feuchtwang, the printer John Jarrold and the process engraver Wilfrid Gilchrist. The publishing house was named after the rivers of London and New York,
Thames and
Hudson, to signify its ambition to publish on both sides of the
Atlantic. However, the point was frequently missed in the business world and letters addressed to
Mr Thames and
Mr Hudson were often received.
Thames and Hudson went on to become one of the most important publishing houses in Europe over the next two decades, by publishing art books at readily affordable prices and being the first to foresee the rise of the quality original paperback. Its
World of Art series in paperback fitted student budgets, and the best titles in the series, such as
Michael Levey's
From Giotto to Cézanne (1962), which had over 500 colour illustrations, went on student reading lists all over the world, in as many as twenty languages, and sold by the hundred thousand, having a powerful impact on international art education. (west side) ==Personal life==