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| Parent company | Penguin Random House |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1887; 139 years ago (1887) |
| Founders | John Lane andElkin Mathews |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Headquarters location | London |
| Publication types | Books |
| Official website | www |
The Bodley Head is an English bookpublishingimprint ofPenguin Random House. Founded in 1887 byJohn Lane andElkin Mathews, The Bodley Head existed as an independent entity or as part of multiple consortia until it was acquired byRandom House in 1987 alongside sister companiesJonathan Cape andChatto & Windus. Random House used The Bodley Head as a children's book imprint until April 2008, when it was repositioned as an adult non-fiction imprint within theVintage Books division.
The Bodley Head launchedPenguin Books as an imprint in 1935, which John Lane spun off as an independent company the following year. The Bodley Head acquired several other imprints prior to the Random House acquisition, includingMartin Hopkinson andGerald Howe in 1941,Nonesuch Press in 1953,Werner Laurie in 1957, andHollis & Carter in 1962.[1]
Originally namedElkin Mathews and John Lane, The Bodley Head was a partnership set up in 1887 by booksellers Elkin Mathews and John Lane, initially to trade inantiquarian books in London. It took the name Bodley Head from a bust ofSir Thomas Bodley, theeponymist of theBodleian Library in Oxford, above the shop door.
Lane and Mathews began in 1894 to publish works of ‘stylish decadence’, including the notorious literary periodicalThe Yellow Book. Also notable amongst Bodley Head's pre-Great War books were the two volume sets:Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1910 and later editions, selling over fifty thousand copies), andImmanuel Kant, both byHouston Stewart Chamberlain.
Herbert George Jenkins was a manager at the firm during the first decade of the twentieth century, before leaving to set up his own publishing house in 1912.[2] The Bodley Head became a private company in 1921. In 1926 it published theBook of Bodley Head Verse, ananthology edited byJ. B. Priestley. The firm published some mainstream popular authors includingArnold Bennett andAgatha Christie and the book series, Twentieth Century Library (edited byV. K. Krishna Menon),[3][4][5] but ran into financial difficulties.Allen Lane, John Lane's nephew who had inherited control, left in 1936 to foundPenguin Books. Before Allen Lane's new company was established, however, he published the first Penguins in 1935 under the imprint of The Bodley Head. Both "Penguin Books" and "The Bodley Head" appeared on the cover.
The Bodley Head continued after 1936 backed by a consortium ofAllen & Unwin,Jonathan Cape, andJ. M. Dent. In 1941, John Lane the Bodley Head took over two smaller publishing houses, Gerald Howe Ltd andMartin Hopkinson & Co., whose authors includedCecil Day Lewis andH. L. Mencken.[6]
The firm was bought in 1957 by Ansbacher & Co., headed byMax Reinhardt. During this period Bodley Head published the work of authors such asGeorge Bernard Shaw,Graham Greene,Charles Chaplin,William Trevor,Maurice Sendak,Muriel Spark,Alexander Solzhenitsyn,Sam Haskins,Winston Graham andAlistair Cooke.Max Reinhardt was also responsible for the expansion of one of the outstanding children's books lists in modern publishing. The imprint was still important in the 1970s when it was drawn into theJonathan Cape/Chatto & Windus group. The firm was sold to Random House in 1987, who published children's books under The Bodley Head name until 2008.
The archives of The Bodley Head Ltd are kept atReading University.[7][8]
The Bodley Head imprint was relaunched by Random House as an adult imprint in April 2008. Its two principal strands are stated to be books "of scholarship in both the humanities and sciences", and books which "contribute to the intellectual and cultural climate of our times".[9]
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