...but its roots go back further to The Scientific Press, founded in the early years of the century. This last firm was owned by Sir Maurice and Lady Gwyer and derived much of its income from the weekly magazine The Nursing Mirror. Their desire to expand into trade publishing led them to Geoffrey Faber, a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and Faber and Gwyer was founded in 1925. After four years, The Nursing Mirror was sold and Geoffrey Faber and the Gwyers agreed to go their separate ways. Searching for a name with a ring of respectability, Geoffrey hit on the name Faber and Faber, although there was only ever one of him.
In the meantime, the firm had prospered. T. S. Eliot, who had been suggested to Faber by a colleague at All Souls, had left Lloyds Bank in London to join him as a literary adviser and in the first season the firm issued his Poems 1909 - 1925. In addition, the catalogues from the early years included books by Ezra Pound, Jean Cocteau, Herbert Read, Max Eastman, George Rylands, John Dover Wilson, Geoffrey Keynes, Forest Reid and Vita Sackville-West. In 1928 the anonymous Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man appeared, proving so popular that over the next six months it was reprinted eight times. Siegfried Sassoon's name was added to the title page for the second impression as the book became Faber's first commercial success, and an enduring literary classic.
Poetry was always to be a prime element in the Faber list and under Eliot's aegis W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Louis MacNeice soon joined Pound, Marianne Moore, Wyndham Lewis, John Gould Fletcher, Roy Campbell, James Joyce and Walter de la Mare.
Under Geoffrey Faber's chairmanship the board in 1929 included Eliot, Richard de la Mare, Charles Stewart and Frank Morley. This young and highly intelligent team built up a comprehensive and profitable catalogue which always had a distinctive physical identity and much of which is still in print. Biographies, memoirs, fiction, poetry, political and religious essays, art and architecture monographs, children's books, and a pioneering ecology list years ahead of its time, gave an unmistakable character to the productions of 24 Russell Square, the firm's Georgian offices in Bloomsbury. It also produced Eliot's literary review The Criterion.
In the Second World War, paper shortages meant profits were large, but almost all went in taxes and subsequent years were difficult. However, with recovery a new generation joined Faber, bringing in writers such as William Golding, Lawrence Durrell, Robert Lowell, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, W. S. Graham, Philip Larkin, P. D. James, Tom Stoppard and John Osborne. These last two, first published in the 1960s, represented the firm's growing commitment to modern drama, reflected in a pre-eminence that remains to the present day.
Faber and Faber has continued to prosper in recent years and is now the last of the great independent publishing houses in London. Its commitment to continuity is reflected in the depth of its backlist, whilst the frontlist goes from strength to strength. In Fiction, established names are joined by exciting new talent. The rejuvenated publishing of Non-fiction, Music and Children's titles brings a diverse range of books to a deserved wider audience, whilst the acclaimed Film and Drama lists maintain their position as market leaders.
Download a 'Brief History' PDF here.
