Gerald Duckworth

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Gerald de l'Etang Duckworth (born 1870, died 28 September 1937, Milan, Italy) was a British publisher.

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[edit] Background and early life

Duckworth was a son of Herbert Duckworth, a London barrister, by his wife Julia Jackson. His middle name, de l'Etang, was the surname of one of his mother's ancestors, Antoine de l'Etang, a page to Queen Marie Antoinette. His mother was a niece of Julia Margaret Cameron, the photographer, after whom she was named.

Duckworth's father died when he was just five weeks old, and when he was eight his mother married the author Leslie Stephen, having four more children. These included Virginia Stephen, later the author Virginia Woolf, and the painter Vanessa Bell. Woolf eventually accused Gerald and his brother of having sexually abused her when she was young.

Gerald Duckworth was educated at Eton College and Clare College, Cambridge.

[edit] Career

In 1898, Duckworth founded the publishing company which bears his name, Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd, in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. In his first year, 1898-1899, he published Henry James's In the Cage; Leslie Stephen's English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century; Jocelyn by John Sinjohn, a nom-de-plume of John Galsworthy; and a translation of August Strindberg's Der Vater.

Edward Garnett was Duckworth's reader for nearly twenty years. The firm published W. H. Hudson, Charles M. Doughty, D. H. Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh, Virginia Woolf and most of the work of Edith Sitwell, Osbert Sitwell, and Sacheverell Sitwell. It published all of John Galsworthy's plays between 1909 and 1929.

In 1929, Galsworthy was shocked that Duckworth required him to sign all 1,250 copies of a limited edition of his collected plays, but when told he would get a royalty of 15s. 9d. per copy, he set up his watch and said: "Let's see how long it takes me to earn £984 7s. 6d".

Anthony Powell became Duckworth's literary editor in 1926, and the publishers Judkins & Judkins in his novel What's become of Waring? (1939) are modelled on Duckworth's.

Duckworth died in 1937, but the firm continued to thrive. It marked its centenary in 1998, but ran into financial troubles in 2003, when it was bought out by Peter Mayer, though it continues to publish under the name of Duckworth.

Three portraits of Duckworth are held by the National Portrait Gallery.

[edit] Family

On 2 March 1921, Duckworth married Cecil Alice Scott-Chad (born 1891), the daughter of Charles Scott-Chad, a barrister. They had no children.

Duckworth's older brother Sir George Herbert Duckworth (1868–1934) was private secretary to Austen Chamberlain and was the grandfather of Anthony Duckworth-Chad. His sister Stella (1869–1897) married John Waller Hills, but died three months later.

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