Secker and Warburg
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Secker & Warburg was formed in 1935 from a takeover of Martin Secker, which was in receivership, by Fredric Warburg and Roger Senhouse. The firm became renowned for its political stance, being both anti-fascist and anti-communist, a position that put them at loggerheads with the ethos of many intellectuals of the time.
When George Orwell parted company with Communist Party sympathizer Victor Gollancz over The Road to Wigan Pier, it was to Secker & Warburg that he took his next book Homage to Catalonia. They were also to publish, after 18 months of rejections and setbacks, Animal Farm. Orwell and Warburg later became intimate friends.
Secker & Warburg published other books by key figures of the anti-Stalinist left, such as C. L. R. James, Rudolf Rocker and Boris Souvarine, as well as works by Lewis Mumford.
In February 1941 they launched a series of "long pamphlets" or "short books" called Searchlight Books, edited by George Orwell and T. R. Fyvel. The series was originally planned to include 17 books, but was discontinued after the publication of ten when bombing destroyed paper stocks.
With its financial position devastated by paper shortages during and after the war, Secker & Warburg were forced to join the Heinemann group of publishers in 1951. During the 1950s and 1960s Secker & Warburg were to publish the works of, amongst others, Simone de Beauvoir, Colette, J.M. Coetzee, Alberto Moravia, Günter Grass, Angus Wilson, Melvyn Bragg and Julian Gloag, as well as the British Buddhist Lobsang Rampa.
Heinemann was purchased by the Octopus Publishing Group in 1985; Octopus was purchased by Reed International (now Reed Elsevier) in 1987. Random House bought the adult trade division of Reed Books in 1997.
Tom Rosenthal, chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, was head of Secker & Warburg from 1971 to 1984.
