George Bell & Sons

LC name authority rec. no95020268

LC heading: George Bell & Sons

George Bell & Sons was a book publishing house located in London, United Kingdom, from 1839 to 1986. It was founded by George Bell as an educational bookseller, with the intention of selling the output of London university presses; but became best known as an independent publisher of classics and children's books.

One of Bell's first investments in publishing was a series of Railway Companions; that is, booklets of timetables and tourist guides. Within a year Bell's publishing business had outstripped his retail business, and he elected to move from his original offices into Fleet Street. There G. Bell & Sons branched into the publication of books on art, architecture, and archaeology, in addition to the classics for which the company was already known. Bell's reputation was only improved by his association with Henry Cole.

In the mid-1850s, Bell expanded again, printing the children's books of Margaret Gatty (Parables from Nature) and Juliana Horatia Ewing (the Nursery Magazine). Around the same time, in 1854, he acquired J. & J.J. Deighton, a bookseller's outfit in Cambridge, which thereupon changed its name to Deighton, Bell & Co. and continued to operate out of Cambridge until at least 1998, although it had been sold to Dawson Books by then.[1] Then, in 1856, Bell brought on board as a partner Frederick Daldy, and renamed the company Bell & Daldy.

With Daldy, Bell began to print more poetry collections, including the Aldine Edition of British Poets and the works of Andrew Lang and Robert Bridges. To the firm's educational output was added Webster's Dictionary, after Bell acquired the British rights to Webster's work. Then, Bell & Daldy took over the libraries of Henry George Bohn, a Covent Garden publisher, and moved their operation to Bohn's former location.[2] With such an extensive library available for publication, Bell's original retail location in Fleet Street was no longer necessary; the firm moved out of Fleet Street for good in 1867.

Daldy left the firm (renamed George Bell & Sons) in 1873, to join the firm of Virtue, Spalding, & Daldy. In 1888, Bell left the piloting of the firm to his sons, Edward and Ernest, but maintained a healthy interest in its day-to-day operation until his death in 1890. In 1910 the firm became a limited liability company, George Bell & Sons, Ltd.

In 1926 Edward Bell died; his son Arthur took his place on the board and became chairman himself in 1936. Other members of the board gradually took over the operation of the firm, until Arthur's death in 1968. In 1977, R.P. Hyman became the managing director of Bell & Hyman, Ltd., and the firm moved to Queen Elizabeth Street, London, where it remained until going out of business in 1989.

George Bell's brother John also worked for the Bell firm; John managed the Chiswick Press until his death in 1885.

Location of the Bell houses[edit]

1839: 1 Bouverie Street

1840: 186 Fleet Street

1854: Acquired Deighton's offices at Green Street and Trinity Street, Cambridge

1864: Acquired 4 York Street, Covent Garden. This location had quite a pedigree: The previous occupant of these houses was the publishing company of Henry George Bohn; before that they had belonged to the bookseller J.H. Bohte, who specialized in classics; and before that (though not immediately before) they had been the home of Thomas de Quincey.[3]

1867: Moved out of Fleet Street

1910: York House, Portugal Street

1977: Denmark House, Queen Elizabeth Street

Some published books[edit]

A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament

W. H. Besant (1900) Elementary Hydrostatics

Duncan Sommerville (1914) The Elements of Non-Euclidean Geometry

References[edit]

Jump up ^ Book for Life

Jump up ^ Weedon, A. Victorian Publishing: The Economics of Book Production for a Mass Market 1836-1916 (2003) Ashgate. ISBN 0-7546-3527-9

Jump up ^ [1] (Wikipedia)

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

"Bell family (per. 1814–1968), publishers, came to prominence with George Bell (1814–1890), who was born on 12 October 1814, the fifth of thirteen children of Matthew Bell, bookseller, stationer, and bookbinder in Richmond, Yorkshire, and his wife, Mary, née Fall....

Bell established a reputation for books on art, architecture, and archaeology. He published the guides to art treasures by Henry Cole (pseudonymously Felix Summerly), including The National Gallery (1843). Bell also worked in collaboration with Joseph Cundall, using photographical illustration. Together they produced Examples of Ornament (1855) and The Great Works of Raphael Sanzio of Urbino (1866). In 1865 Bell travelled to the south of France and Italy, and brought home photographs which were engraved and used to illustrate Robert Burns's Rome and the Campagna (1871). Many of his art titles were printed at the Chiswick Press, under Charles Whittingham's management. After Whittingham's death the firm came up for sale and Bell bought it, installing his brother John as manager. About the same time Bell bought the publishing business of his former employer, Whittaker & Co.....

In 1904 the firm moved to purpose-built offices at York House, in Portugal Street, Kingsway, London. In 1910 George Bell & Sons became a private limited company and Edward and Ernest became directors. Ernest had followed his brother to Trinity College, Cambridge, and into the firm in 1874. He was an advocate of vegetarianism and contributed several books on the subject to the firm's list, including In a Nutshell: Cons and Pros of the Meatless Diet (1920). He was a passionate defender of animal rights, writing for the Animal's Friend and the Humanitarian League. In 1911 he was joined by another member of the family, Kenneth Norman Bell (1884–1951), grandson of the founder of the firm, who had returned from Toronto, where he had been a lecturer at the university, to take an active part in the business. In 1913 Kenneth was elected a director of the firm. Though after the First World War he resumed his academic career and became a tutor at Balliol College, Oxford, he continued his editorial interest in the company. After Edward's death Ernest Bell succeeded as chairman of the company and Edward's son, Colonel Arthur Hugh Bell, joined the board.

Arthur Hugh Bell (1878–1968) was born at 4 Fellows Road, Hampstead, London, on 16 April 1878. He was educated at Charterhouse School and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. On 10 October 1905 he married Gabrielle (b. 1883/4), daughter of James Kennedy. Bell's early career was in the Royal Engineers, and he served in the South African War from 1900 to 1902 and in the First World War from 1915 to 1916, when he was wounded. In 1917 and again in 1919–20 he was in India on the north-west frontier, Waziristan, and he served in the Third Anglo-Afghan War of 1919. He was appointed DSO (1916) and OBE (1919). He was posted to southern Ireland during the Anglo-Irish War (1920–21) and to Turkey in 1922–3, during the Chanak crisis. Bell retired from the army in 1928 to take a more active role in his father's company, becoming chairman in 1936. He continued to develop the firm's educational list, as conditions following the Second World War had created a need for new books and a new approach. Bell was also an expert on dowsing. In addition to a number of articles which he published in a military journal, he translated four French books on the subject and was the editor of Practical Dowsing (1965). Arthur Hugh Bell died at his home, the Old Vicarage, Cuckfield, Sussex, on 21 February 1968.

“Bell family (per. 1814–1968),” Alexis Weedon in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, eee ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: OUP, 2004); online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman, May 2006,. Accesssed August 15, 2015. www.oxforddnb.com