| Founded | 1929 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Geoffrey Faber |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Headquarters location | London |
| Distribution | The Book Service (UK) |
| Publication types | Books |
| Official website | www.faber.co.uk |
Faber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music books, as well as books for children. Perhaps Faber's most famous book is William Golding's Lord of the Flies, a novel famously rejected and ignored by many publishers before being rescued from the Faber slush-pile.
In 2006 the company was named Publisher of the Year.
Faber and Faber Inc., formerly the American branch of the London company, was sold in 1998 to the Holtzbrinck company Farrar, Straus and Giroux, now operated as part of the Macmillan group.
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Faber and Faber began as a firm in 1929, but its roots go back further to the Scientific Press, owned by Sir Maurice and Lady Gwyer. The Scientific Press derived much of its income from the weekly magazine The Nursing Mirror. The Gwyers' 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 Faber hit on the name Faber and Faber, although the implied partnership was pure invention.
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, Forrest Reid, Charles Williams, and Vita Sackville-West. In 1928 Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man appeared, proving so popular that over the next six months it was reprinted eight times. First published anonymously, the author's name, Siegfried Sassoon, was added to the title page for the second impression. The book became Faber's first commercial success, and an enduring literary classic.
Poetry was a prime element in the Faber list and under T. S. Eliot's aegis W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Louis MacNeice soon joined Ezra 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 T. S. 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. Faber published biographies, memoirs, fiction, poetry, political and religious essays, art and architecture monographs, children's books, and launched a pioneering ecology list. It also published T. S. Eliot's literary review, The Criterion. T. S. Eliot rejected two books by George Orwell, A Scullions Tale (the first version of Down and Out) and Animal Farm.
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.
Faber and Faber has continued to prosper in recent years. Established names have been joined by new voices including Kazuo Ishiguro, Peter Carey, Orhan Pamuk and Barbara Kingsolver, and its arts lists continue to break new talent in poetry, drama, film and music. Having published the theatrical works of Samuel Beckett for many years, the company acquired the rights to the remainder of his oeuvre from the publishing house of John Calder in 2007. In a surprise move, Faber announced in October 2011 that Jarvis Cocker, lead singer with Pulp would be joining as Editor-at-Large, an appointment echoing a similar role taken up by Pete Townshend of The Who in the 1980s.
In 2008 the imprint Faber Finds was set up to make copyrighted out-of-print books available again, using print-on-demand technology.[1][2] Authors republished in the imprint have included works of the Mass-Observation archives, John Betjeman, Angus Wilson, A. J. P. Taylor, H. G. Wells, Joyce Cary, Nina Bawden, Jean Genet, P. H. Newby, Louis MacNeice, John Carey, F. R. Leavis, Jacob Bronowski, Jan Morris and Brian Aldiss. In 2009 Faber Finds began to roll out an e-book programme.[3]
Faber's American arm was sold in 1998 to Farrar, Straus and Giroux, where it remains an active imprint focusing on arts, entertainment, media, and popular culture.
In 2008, Faber launched The Faber Academy, a creative writing business offering courses for aspiring writers, including "The Art of Publication", "Writing Fiction" and "Becoming a Poet". Course tutors have included prominent writers including Mike Figgis, Jeanette Winterson and Tobias Hill. Notable students have included S. J. Watson. In 2011 the Faber Academy launched a new website.
Faber Digital was launched in 2009, with a specific remit to innovate in publishing. It has published a number of book-related apps for the iPhone and the iPad, including Malcolm Tucker: The Missing Phone (which was nominated for a BAFTA award), QI: Quite Interesting, Harry Hill's Joke Book, and The Waste Land for iPad app. The Waste Land for iPad app was Faber's second collaboration with Touch Press, following the Solar System for iPad, which won the Futurebook Award for Digital innovation at the Book Industry Awards in 2011. In 2012, in partnership with Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, Faber Digital will launch Drama Online, creating a digital content platform for libraries, educators, students and researchers to be sold via subscription and perpetual access to academic institutions.
Reacting to the shift in the publishing industry to a greater focus on digital, and to offering services to both publishers and authors, Faber (in partnership with the Perseus Group in the US) launched The Faber Factory in 2011, a digitisation service.
The firm's original location was its Georgian offices at 24 Russell Square, in Bloomsbury, London. Faber later moved to 3 Queen Square, London, and on 19 January 2009 the firm moved to Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street, London.