Allison & Busby

Allison and Busby
Founded1967 (1967)
FoundersClive Allison; Margaret Busby
Country of originEngland
Headquarters locationLondon
Distribution
Key peopleSusie Dunlop (Publishing Director)
Publication typesBooks
Official websitewww.allisonandbusby.com

Allison & Busby (A & B) is a publishing house based in London established by Clive Allison and Margaret Busby in 1967.[3][4][5]

Early years

In 1965, Clive Allison (15 June 1944–25 July 2011)[3] and Margaret Busby (born 1944) met at a party in Bayswater when both were undergraduates;[4] he was President of the Oxford Poetry Society and she the editor of a literary magazine at London University.[5] Busby later remembered, "[a]s the party ended, we continued talking and walking late into the night, and by the time we parted company had already decided on a course of action that would shape the rest of our lives: we would start a publishing house to produce poetry, not in the expensive elitist hardback volumes in which it traditionally appeared, but as cheap paperbacks that even people like us could afford."[5]

Two years later, in May 1967, Allison & Busby was launched. At the time Busby was the UK's youngest and the first black woman publisher.[6] In 1969, they set up office in a friend's flat in Soho; the first book published after that date was The Spook Who Sat by the Door by the African-American author Sam Greenlee, which was rejected by numerous publishers in both the US and UK.[3] Allison's then-wife Lyn van der Riet also worked for the company in the ensuing years, as did Lavinia Greenlaw, who went on to become a respected poet and novelist.[3]

Since 1987

The company was acquired by W. H. Allen Ltd in 1987, was subsequently part of Virgin Publishing,[7] and has since "evolved and thrived under various independent managers",[8] including Peter Day and David Shelley.[9] Margaret Busby left the company in 1987;[10][11] Clive Allison stayed on for several more years.[3] A & B is now owned by Spanish publisher Javier Moll's Editorial Prensa Ibérica.[12]

References

  1. ^ "Allison and Busby". Bookseller Information. Warehouse and Distribution. Retrieved 17 November 2018.
  2. ^ "Baker & Taylor | News". Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d e Busby, Margaret (3 August 2011). "Clive Allison obituary". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 17 November 2018.
  4. ^ a b Kingshill, Katie (7 September 2011). "Clive Allison: Publisher whose eclectic imprint was in the vanguard of independent houses". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 19 December 2013. Retrieved 17 November 2018.
  5. ^ a b c "Margaret Busby remembers Clive Allison". Poetry Book Society. 5 August 2011. Archived from the original on 2 June 2016. Retrieved 7 September 2012.
  6. ^ "Margaret Busby Profile". The Guardian. Retrieved December 2014.
  7. ^ Virgin Group History, Funding Universe.
  8. ^ "Co-founder of Allison & Busby dies". Allison & Busby website. Archived from the original on 3 October 2016. Retrieved 3 October 2011. Retrieved October 2011.
  9. ^ Caroline Dawnay and David Shelley, "Peter Day: a man of unerring human and literary insight", BookBrunch, 23 July 2014.
  10. ^ Carole Boyce Davies, "Women and Literature in the African Diaspora", in Melvin Ember, Carol R. Ember, Ian Skoggard (eds), Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures Around the World., Springer, 2005, p. 384.
  11. ^ Shereen Ali, "Sharing Our Voices" Archived 2 August 2018 at the Wayback Machine, Trinidad Guardian, 29 April 2015.
  12. ^ "New face at Allison & Busby", Publishing News Digital Archive, Kingston University Information Services, 25 February 2005.

Further reading

  • Kate Kingshill, "Clive Allison" (obituary),The Independent, 7 September 2011, p. 70.
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