Scene: A party, somewhere in London.
Stranger: So where do you work?
Me: Random House.
Stranger: Random House? Do you sell furniture?
Me: Um, no. We’re a book publishers actually.
Stranger: Really? I’ve never heard of you.
Me: We publish literary fiction and non-fiction, people like Ian McEwan, Rose Tremain, Gunter Grass, Salman Rushdie, Audrey Niffenegger, Martin Amis…
Stranger: Oh I’ve heard of them.
Me: …Sadie Jones, Henning Mankell, Lance Armstrong, Julian Barnes, Joseph O’Connor…
Stranger: And them.
Me: …Simon Schama, Ma Jian, Susan Hill, Umberto Eco…
Stranger: I’m going to get a drink.
Me: …Bettany Hughes, David Malouf, Alison Weir…
Like all good families, most publishers, Random House amongst them, have a complicated family tree. While The Random House Group itself is a relatively recent name – the Random House name and colophon made its debut in the US in 1927 but it wasn’t until 1987 that Random House Inc acquired the Chatto*, Viragoº, Bodley Head¹ and Jonathan Capeª lists in the UK – the company is made up in part of lists with long and illustrious histories, lists that have now all come together under the roof of 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road. So long and illustrious are some of these histories that it’s almost impossible to keep track of everything we have ever published under one name or another. Having worked here for five and a half years I regularly come across books on our file shelves that I never knew we published. It’s like working in the best library in the world – where there’s always something new to find, and no late fees to pay!
It also means that we have a wonderful treasure trove of publishing history at our archives down at Rushden. For anyone who works in publishing and spends much of their time on the computer, getting to root through archives with the assistance of library manager Jean Rose (possibly the most helpful, efficient woman I have ever met) does not count as a day of work – it is fun, pure and simple. From the yellowing copies of almanacs written by a leading psychic in the first half of the twentieth century (a quick flick through their predictions for 1939 proves that, sadly, war was not obvious to all) to the first ever catalogues we produced here at Vintage over twenty years ago, to the sometimes shocking and/or comic book jackets that were apparently considered attractive back in the 70s, it’s a glimpse back into the history of our industry.
I feel a particular warmth towards our archives because, on their towering shelves, I have found three books, each originally published by a completely different list, that we have gone on to re-issue on the Vintage lists. Each book is very different – The Magic key to Charm is a frothy, frivolous guide on everything from how to look elegant when running for the bus to how best to achieve serenity; The Red House Mystery is a classic country house murder mystery written by the world famous children’s author, A.A Milne; while Mrs Dalloway's Party is a short story sequence that revolves around the subject of parties, written by Virginia Woolf at the time she was writing Mrs Dalloway.
There’s something very comforting about the fact that forty, fifty or sixty years after they were first published – at a point when their authors wouldn’t have seen a computer, never mind downloaded an ebook – these books still find an eager audience. I wonder whether any of the books I’ve edited at Random House will be found in years to come, by an editor on a day trip to the archives?
Anyway, I’m back to searching my shelves for any other lost gems we can bring back into print; let me know in the comments below if there’s anything you know of that you’d love to see back in the bookshops.
*The grand dame of our imprints; founded in 1855 by John Camden Hotten, Chatto acquired The Hogarth Press, founded by Virginia and Leonard Woolf, in 1946, and it was on this list that we first published Mrs Dalloway’s Party back in 1973
º now part of the Little, Brown Group
¹founded in 1887, it ceased trading as an adult imprint in 1990 but was re-launched as the home of serious non-fiction in 2008
The first two books, published in 2007 and 2008 respectively, have gone on to a find a whole new audience; Mrs Dalloway’s Party is published today in a gorgeous little hardback that will be the perfect accessory for any Christmas party, and I hope will also find many new readers. ª founded in 1921, Cape quickly established itself as one of the leading literary publishers in London and remains the imprint that has published the most Booker Prize winners – The Conservationist, Nadine Gordimer; Saville, David Storey; Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie; Hotel du Lac, Anita Brookner; The Famished Road, Ben Okri, Amsterdam, Ian McEwan and The Gathering, Anne Enright