Constable

Constable and Co was founded in 1795 when Archibald Constable, an Edinburgh bookseller, opened a shop and began to publish original works under his own name. Thus was one of the first independent UK publishing houses started, and over the decades it became known as a house of excellence, publishing such names as Sir Walter Scott, Henry James, Bram Stoker, George Bernard Shaw, Elizabeth Bowen and B. S. Johnson.

In 1999 Constable merged with another independent headed by Nick Robinson, Robinson Publishing, and became Constable & Robinson Ltd, publishing in a variety of fields including fiction, non-fiction, psychology, humour, brief histories and how to books. In 2012 C&R became Independent Publisher of the Year at both the Bookseller Awards and the IPG awards, and in 2014 the company was purchased by Little, Brown. To this day it remains a list that is defined by not only prestige but also commerciality.