Eyre & Spottiswoode was the London-based printing firm established in 1739^[1] that was theKing's Printer, and subsequently, a publisher prior to being incorporated; it once went by the name of Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & co. ltd.^[2] In April 1929, it was incorporated asEyre & Spottiswoode (Publishers) Ltd. It became part of Associated Book Publishers in 1958 and merged withMethuen in the 1970s with the resulting company known as Eyre Methuen.

The business that became Eyre & Spottiswoode was founded byWilliam Strahan in 1739.^[3] His son Andrew inherited the business upon William's death in 1785.^[4] Brothers Robert andAndrew Spottiswoode took over management for their uncle Andrew Stahan in 1819 and continued until 1832.^[5] In the 19th century, the firm had a printing works atShacklewell. The firm was re-appointedKing's Printer after the accession ofKing Edward VII in May 1901.^[6]

Douglas Jerrold became a director in 1929, when it incorporated as a publishing house, became chairman in 1945, and retired in 1958. Between 1944 and 1948,Graham Greene was his director, in charge of developing its fiction list. Greene createdThe Century Library series, which was discontinued after he left following a conflict with Jerrold regardingAnthony Powell's contract. In 1958, Greene was offered the position of chairman byOliver Crosthwaite-Eyre, but declined.^[7]

The2nd City of London Rifle Volunteer Corps was founded in 1860 as one of many such regiments raised in response to an invasion scare. Recruited in theFleet Street area, largely from Eyre & Spottiswoode's printing works, it was known as "the Printers' Battalion". Among the first officers to be commissioned into the unit were George A. Spottiswoode and William Spottiswoode.^[8][9][10] When the unit became the6th Battalion London Regiment (City of London Rifles) in the newTerritorial Force in 1908, G Company was still mainly recruited from the company's employees.^[11]

In 1920, the firm was the first in the United Kingdom to print a translation of the notorious antisemitic textThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion, with the additional titleThe Jewish Peril.Norman Cohn said that a distinction is to be made between theprinter and thepublisher of the same name. The pamphlet, shows it was printed by "EYRE & SPOTTISWOODE, LTD.".^[12] It seems^{[to whom?]} that this edition of theProtocols was printed to private commission and therefore bears the imprint of the printers, Eyre & Spottiswoode Ltd, instead of a publisher's imprint. The firm of Eyre & Spottiswoode (Publishers) Ltd was founded in April 1929.^[13]

• The Century Library^[14][15]
• Country Library^[16]
• Highways to the Sun^[17]
• How to Play Series
• The Kew Series^[18]
• Keystone Library
• London Mystery Stories^[19]
• Modern Writers and Playwrights^[20]
• Popular Fiction^[21]
• The Practitioner Handbooks
• The Regions of Britain

• Austen-Leigh, Richard Arthur (1912).The Story of a Printing House: Being a Short Account of the Strahans and Spottiswoodes. London: Spottiswoode & Co. Ltd.
• Ian F. W. Beckett,Riflemen Form: A study of the Rifle Volunteer Movement 1859–1908, Aldershot: Ogilby Trusts, 1982,ISBN 0-85936-271-X.
• Capt E. G. Godfrey,The "Cast Iron Sixth": A History of the Sixth Battalion London Regiment (The City of London Rifles), London: Old Comrades' Association, 1935//Uckfield: Naval & Military Press, 2002,ISBN 1-84342-170-4.
• Ray Westlake,Tracing the Rifle Volunteers, Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2010,ISBN 978-1-84884-211-3.
• Norman Cohn,Warrant for Genocide (London: Serif, 1996).

• Eyre and Spottiswoode, Grace's Guide to British Industrial History.

• Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom
• Protocols of the Elders of Zion
• British companies established in 1739
• Publishing companies established in the 1730s
• 1739 establishments in England
• English printers

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