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Methuen Publishing Ltd (/ˈmɛθjuən/; also known asMethuen Books) is an Englishpublishing house.

It was founded in 1889 by SirAlgernon Methuen (1856–1924) and began publishing in London in 1892. Initially, Methuen mainly published non-fiction academic works, eventually diversifying to encourage female authors and later translated works.^[1]E. V. Lucas headed the firm from 1924 to 1938.

In June 1889, as a sideline to teaching, Algernon Methuen began to publish and market his owntextbooks under the label Methuen & Co. The company's first success came in 1892 with the publication ofRudyard Kipling'sBarrack-Room Ballads. Rapid growth came with works byMarie Corelli,Hilaire Belloc,Robert Louis Stevenson, andOscar Wilde (De Profundis, 1905)^[2] as well asEdgar Rice Burroughs'Tarzan of the Apes.^[3]

In 1910, the business was converted into alimited liability company withE. V. Lucas and G.E. Webster joining the founder on the board of directors.^[4] The company published the 1920 English translation ofAlbert Einstein'sRelativity, the Special and the General Theory: A Popular Exposition.

With knowledge he had gained ofchildren's literature at the publisher Grant Richards, E. V. Lucas built on the company's early success. Methuen publishedThe Blue Bird.A Fairy Play in Six Acts byMaurice Maeterlinck (Nobel Prize in Literature 1911) in an English translation byAlexander Teixeira de Mattos. Among the authors Lucas signed to the company wereA. A. Milne,Kenneth Grahame, while he also supported illustratorsW. Heath Robinson, H. M. Bateman andE. H. Shepard.^[5] By the 1920s, it had also a literary list that includedAnthony Hope,G. K. Chesterton,Henry James,D. H. Lawrence,T. S. Eliot,Ruth Manning-Sanders andThe Arden Shakespeare series.

Following the publication of Lawrence'sThe Rainbow (1915), Methuen was prosecuted for obscenity. The firm offered no defence and agreed to destroy the remaining stock of 1,011 copies.^[3] It is thought that one reason for the firm's failure to support Lawrence was that he had at the time written an unkind portrait of the chief editor's brother, who had recently been killed in France.^[5]

In 1924,E. V. Lucas succeeded Algernon Methuen as chairman and led the company until his death in 1938.^[5] Besides his executive role, he also received a separate salary as the chief reader of the company. His commercial judgment added authorsEnid Blyton,P. G. Wodehouse,Pearl S. Buck andMaurice Maeterlinck to the company's list. In 1935, they publishedDaniele Varè's novelThe Maker of Heavenly Trousers.

In 1930, the company published the popular humorous book1066 and All That.

Methuen was the English publisher of the book editions ofThe Adventures of Tintin, a series of classicBelgian comic-strip books, written and illustrated byHergé. Methuen altered theireditions of Tintin by insisting that books featuring British characters undergo major changes.The Black Island, first published in French in 1937, was set in Great Britain, but, prior to publishing it themselves in 1966, Methuen decided that it did not reflect the U.K. accurately enough and sent a list of 131 "errors" to be corrected.^[6] It was thus redrawn and reset in the 1960s. Critics have attacked Methuen over the changes, claiming thatThe Black Island lost a lot of its charm as a result.^[6]Land of Black Gold had had a troubled publishing history, but the completed adventure eventually appeared in 1948–1950. It was set in theBritish Mandate of Palestine and featured the conflict between Jews, Arabs, and British troops. When Methuen was translating theAdventures of Tintin into English,Israel had long since been in existence, and Methuen asked for it to be edited. Hergé took the opportunity to redraw the few problematic pages, as well as the pages before that: the freighter that appeared before that was based on Hergé's imagination, due to lack of resources at the time. The earlier version, published in 1950, was reprinted byCasterman as a facsimile edition, but internationally was completely replaced by the newer version.

Methuen Children's Books, under the leadership ofOlive Jones, Charles Shirley andMarilyn Malin, has been described as "an outward-looking company whose sense of identity was enhanced by bright design, a keen marketing drive, and a strong European flavour".^[7]

In 1958, Methuen was part of the conglomerateAssociated Book Publishers (ABP), and for much of the 1970s was known asEyre Methuen following its absorption of theEyre & Spottiswoode firm. When ABP was acquired by theThomson Organization in 1987, it sold off the trade publishing units, including Methuen, toReed International's Octopus.^[8] Reed sold off its trade publishing toRandom House in February 1997. Methuen Drama bought itself out in 1998 while retaining the distribution and warehousing services with Random House.^[1][9] That same year, Reed sold Methuen's children's catalogue to theEgmont Group. Egmont Group sold its UK book division toHarperCollins in 2020.

In 2003, Methuen Drama purchased the company Politico's Publishing from its ownerIain Dale.^[10] In 2006, Methuen sold its notable drama lists toA & C Black for £2.35 million.

Penguin Random House now owns the rights to many books that used to be published under the Methuen name throughRandom House and theAdrian Mole franchise throughPenguin Books, the company also distributed the titles of now-independent Methuen Books.^[9] Many of the publisher's academic titles are now published byRoutledge.^[11]

Methuen Books continues to publish new works of fiction and non-fiction, as well as reprinting older, classic works. Contemporary Methuen authors includeMark Dunn,^[12]Robert McKee,^[13]Michael Palin,^[14] 1986 Nobel Prize WinnerWole Soyinka,^[15] and 2012 Nobel Prize WinnerMo Yan.^[16] Classic Methuen authors include the American novelistWalker Percy,^[17] the American academic and commentatorNeil Postman,^[18] and the British cartoonistNorman Thelwell.^[19]

• Duffy, Maureen (1989).A Thousand Capricious Chances: A History of the Methuen List 1889–1989 (hardback). London: Methuen.ISBN 978-0413573506.
• Stevenson, Iain (2010).Book Makers: British Publishing in the Twentieth Century (hardback). London: The British Library. pp. 314 pages.ISBN 978-0-7123-0961-5.

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• British companies established in 1889
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