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Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Penguin Random House that was formerly an independent book publishing company founded in London in 1855 by John Camden Hotten. Following Hotten's death, the firm would reorganize under the names of his business partner Andrew Chatto and poet William Edward Windus. The company was purchased by Random House in 1987 and is now a sub-imprint of Vintage Books within the Penguin UK division.

History

The firm developed out of the publishing business of John Camden Hotten, founded in 1855. After his death in 1873, it was sold to Hotten's junior partner Andrew Chatto (1841–1913), who took on the poet William Edward Windus (1827–1910), son of the patron of J. M. W. Turner, Benjamin Godfrey Windus (1790–1867), as partner. Chatto & Windus published Mark Twain, W. S. Gilbert, Wilkie Collins, H. G. Wells, Wyndham Lewis, Richard Aldington, Frederick Rolfe (as Fr. Rolfe), Aldous Huxley, Samuel Beckett, the "unfinished" novel Weir of Hermiston (1896) by Robert Louis Stevenson, and the first translation into English of Marcel Proust's novel À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, 1922), among others.

In 1946, the company took over the running of the Hogarth Press, founded in 1917 by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Active as an independent publishing house until 1969, when it merged with Jonathan Cape, it published broadly in the field of literature, including novels and poetry. It is not connected, except in the loosest historical fashion, with Pickering & Chatto Publishers.

Chatto & Windus became a limited company in 1953. Norah Smallwood was appointed to the board, and later succeeded Ian Parsons as chairman and managing director in 1975, serving until her retirement in 1982.

Chatto, along with Jonathan Cape and Virago Press were purchased by Penguin Random House in 1987. As of 2019, Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Vintage Publishing UK.

Book series

• Ancient Culture and Society
• The BBC Reith Lectures
• Books for Today
• Brief Lives (also published by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday in United States as Ackroyd's Brief Lives)
• Britain in the World Today (also published by Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore)
• Central African Archives: Oppenheimer Series
• The Centaur Library
• Chatto & Windus Paperbacks
• Chatto and Windus's Colonial Library
• Chatto & Windus' Sixpenny Novels
• Chatto Anthologies (sometimes referred to as "Chatto Book of" series)
• Chatto Counterblasts
• Chatto Curiosities of the British Street
• Chatto Nature Guides
• Chatto Pocket Library
• Chatto Poetry
• Chatto Poets for the Young
• Children's Life in Other Lands Series
• Collected Works: Aldous Huxley
• Columbus Centre Series (for Sussex University Press) (joint publisher: Heinemann Educational)
• The Complete Works of Bret Harte
• Compact Poets
• Dawn of History Series
• The Dolphin Books
• The Golden Library
• Gotham Library
• The Great Songwriters
• Immortals of Science (this series originally published by Franklin Watts, Inc., New York)
• The Key of the Kingdom
• The Khaki Library
• The King's Classics
• The Landmark Library
• Life and Art in Photograph (republished in the United States by Oxford University Press, New York)
• London Limited Editions
• Mathematics for Science and Technology
• The Mayfair Library
• The Medieval Library
• Modern Science: Physics and Chemistry
• Modular Textbooks in Engineering
• My Life And Times: Compton Mackenzie
• National Benzole Books
• The New Medieval Library
• The New Phoenix Library
• New Piccadilly Library
• Pelham Library
• Phoenix Anthologies Series
• The Phoenix Library (revived in 1950 as The New Phoenix Library)
• Phoenix Library of Food and Drink
• The Phoenix Living Poets
• Phoenix Novels
• Piccadilly Library Series
• Piccadilly Novels
• Play Ideas Series (AKA Play Ideas and Things-to-do Series)
• The Queen's Classics
• The Reform Series
• Richmond Lectures
• The Robins Series
• Royal Road Readers
• The Shakespeare Library, comprising the series (1) The Old-Spelling Shakespeare; (2) The Shakespeare Classics; (3) The Lamb Shakespeare for the Young; and (4) Shakespeare's England
• St Antony's Papers
• St Martin's Library
• The Stage Poet
• Studies in English History
• Studies in International Security (for the International Institute for Strategic Studies)
• Use of English Pamphlets
• The Vampire Chronicles
• The Vanguard Library
• Young Learner Books
• Zodiac Books (reissue of The Zodiac Press series)

References

1. "Chatto & Windus Ltd. Archive". University of Reading. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
2. "Chatto and Windus Limited – overview". Companies House. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
3. "Chatto & Windus ¦ Making Britain". Open University. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
4. "VINTAGE: Chatto & Windus". Penguin Books. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
5. "Books for Today" + Chatto, worldcat.org. Retrieved 9 February 2024.
6. se:The Centaur Library, worldcat.org. Retrieved 15 February 2024.
7. Chatto & Windus, arthur-conan-doyle.com. Retrieved 16 February 2024.
8. Chatto Curiosities of the British Street (Chatto & Windus) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
9. se:Chatto poets for the young, worldcat.org. Retrieved 9 February 2024.
10. se:Columbus Centre series, worldcat.org. Retrieved 2 March 2024.
11. Krygier, John. "Dolphin Books". Ohio Wesleyan University. A Series of Series: 20th-Century Publishers Book Series. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
12. Krygier, John. "Golden Library". Ohio Wesleyan University. A Series of Series: 20th-Century Publishers Book Series. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
13. "Immortals of science" + Chatto, worldcat.org. Retrieved 9 February 2024.
14. se:The Khaki Library, worldcat.org. Retrieved 15 February 2024.
15. "The King's Classics" + Chatto, worldcat.org. Retrieved 9 February 2024.
16. Krygier, John. "Landmark Library". Ohio Wesleyan University. A Series of Series: 20th-Century Publishers Book Series. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
17. se:Life in art and photograph, worldcat.org. Retrieved 9 February 2024.
18. Krygier, John. "New Medieval Library". Ohio Wesleyan University. A Series of Series: 20th-Century Publishers Book Series. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
19. The New Phoenix Library (Chatto & Windus) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
20. The Phoenix Library (Chatto & Windus) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
21. Andrew Nash, "Sifting out 'Rubbish' in the Literature of the Twenties and Thirties: Chatto & Windus and the Phoenix Library", in: John Spiers, ed., The Culture of the Publisher's Series, vol. 1, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
22. Phoenix Library, worldcat.org. Retrieved 15 February 2024.
23. Phoenix Library of Food and Drink, seriesofseries.com. Retrieved 17 May 2023.
24. The Phoenix Living Poets (Chatto & Windus) - Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
25. Frak Sidgwick, The Sources and Analogues of A Midsummernight's Dream, London: Chatto & Windus, 1908, publisher's advertisement in final pages. Retrieved 2 March 2024.
26. Krygier, John. "St. Martin's Library". Ohio Wesleyan University. A Series of Series: 20th-Century Publishers Book Series. Retrieved 5 July 2020.
27. Krygier, John. "Zodiac Books". Ohio Wesleyan University. A Series of Series: 20th-Century Publishers Book Series. Retrieved 5 July 2020.

Further reading

• Warner, Oliver, Chatto & Windus: A Brief Account of the Firm's Origin, History and Development, London: Chatto & Windus, 1973.
• Knowlson, James, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
• Sutherland, John, The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction, Stanford University Press: 1990, ISBN 0-8047-1842-3, p. 118.

External links

• Official website
• Chatto & Windus catalogs
• Works by Chatto & Windus at Project Gutenberg
• Archives of Chatto & Windus Ltd

• RTL Group
• Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom
• Random House
• Publishing companies established in 1855
• British companies established in 1855
• Chatto family