Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd (established 1948), often shortened to W&N or Weidenfeld, is a British publisher of fiction and reference books. From 1991 it is a division of the Orion Publishing Group.
History
George Weidenfeld and Nigel Nicolson founded Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1948 and established a solid reputation by publishing controversial landmark titles like Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1959) and Portrait of a Marriage (1973), Nicolson's biography of his mother, Vita Sackville-West. In its early years Weidenfeld also published nonfiction works by Isaiah Berlin, Hugh Trevor-Roper, and Rose Macaulay, and novels by Mary McCarthy and Saul Bellow. Later it published a host of titles by world leaders and historians, along with contemporary fiction and glossy illustrated books.
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 included Phoenix, its own establishment much earlier; and J. M. Dent, acquired in 1988, and thus its establishment Everyman. They have increased greatly since the Orion acquisition and Orion's acquisition in turn by Hachette Livre in 1998. (The hardcover rights to Everyman Library were sold in 1991, and survive as a Random House property. Paperback Everyman Classics continue under Orion.)
Late in 2013, W&N published the British edition (and Hachette subsidiary Little, Brown the American edition) of I am Malala, the memoir of Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb. Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani teenager, a female education activist, and a 2014 Nobel Peace Prize nominee.
References
- Citations
- "A brief history of the Orion Publishing Group" at the Wayback Machine (archived January 22, 2010). Orion Books (orionbooks.co.uk). Archived 2010-01-22. Retrieved 2014-04-11.
External links
- Weidenfeld & Nicolson blog
- The Orion Publishing Group