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| Parent company | Orion Publishing Group |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1949[1] |
| Founder | George Weidenfeld andNigel Nicolson |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Headquarters location | London |
| Publication types | Books |
| Nonfiction topics | History, biography, celebrity, fiction, illustrated books. |
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| Official website | orionbooks |
Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd (established 1949), often shortened toW&N orWeidenfeld, is a British publisher of fiction and reference books. It has been a division of the French-ownedOrion Publishing Group since 1991.
George Weidenfeld andNigel Nicolson founded Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1949 with a reception atBrown's Hotel, London.[1][2] Among many other significant books, it publishedVladimir Nabokov'sLolita (1959) and Nicolson'sPortrait of a Marriage (1973), a frank biography of his motherVita Sackville-West and fatherHarold Nicolson. In its early years Weidenfeld also published nonfiction works byIsaiah Berlin,Hugh Trevor-Roper, andRose Macaulay, and novels byMary McCarthy andSaul Bellow. Later it published titles by world leaders and historians, along with contemporary fiction and glossy illustrated books.[3][4] Weidenfeld & Nicolson acquired the publisher Arthur Baker Ltd in 1959, and ran it as an imprint into the 1990s.[5]
Weidenfeld was one of Orion's first acquisitions after the group's founding in 1991, and formed the core of its offerings. At that time Weidenfeld imprints includedPhoenix, its own much earlier establishment; andJ. M. Dent, acquired in 1988 along with its Everyman series. Orion was acquired in turn byHachette Livre in 1998.[6] The hardcover rights toEveryman Library were sold in 1991, and survive as aRandom House property; paperbacks ofEveryman Classics continued under Orion. In January 2002,Cassell imprints, including the Cassell Reference and Cassell Military were joined with the Weidenfeld imprints to form a new division under the name of Weidenfeld & Nicolson.[7]
Late in 2013, W&N published the British edition (and Hachette subsidiaryLittle, Brown the American edition) ofI Am Malala, the memoir of Pakistani-born teenagerMalala Yousafzai withChristina Lamb. Yousafzai is afemale education activist, and theNobel Peace Prize winner in 2014.[8][9]
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