W. H. Smith

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Marina Warner
During the war her father (then a Lieutenant-Colonel) met the owners of the book chain W. H. Smith , and through them established an English-language bookshop for the international community in Cairo. The shop...
Publishing Wilkie Collins
But he lost the next trick when W. H. Smith supplied its cheap Railway Library series not from the Bentley edition but from 400 bound copies of extracts from Cassell's.
Lycett, Andrew. “Collins the campaigner”. The Author, Vol.
126
, No. 1, 1 Mar.–31 May 2015, pp. 20-1.
21
Publishing Mary Augusta Ward
This quick release of an affordable edition left the big circulating library Mudie's (who on 27 June had announced with W. H. Smith a reduction in their standard payment for triple-deckers) with hundreds of expensive...
Publishing Annie S. Swan
Her papers are held at the University of Aberdeen , Edinburgh University , and Columbia University , New York, which holds both catalogued and uncatalogued correspondence by her in its collection of the papers...
Reception Dinah Mulock Craik
The essay collection was among the most popular of DMC 's books. It went into a second edition the year after it appeared, was translated into Swedish, soon appeared in the TauchnitzBritish Authors series...
Reception Oscar Wilde
The bookseller W. H. Smith , on its publication in 1891, declined to sell the novel on the grounds that it was filthy.
Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. Knopf, 1988.
323
Reception Marina Warner
At the age of fourteen, MW won the W. H. Smith Children's Poetry Prize.
Williams, Elaine. “Marina Warner”. Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Forty Women Whose Ideas Shape the Modern World, edited by Sian Griffiths, Manchester University Press, 1996, pp. 259-67.
260
Reception Dora Marsden
The Freewoman was banned from W. H. Smith shops because the nature of certain articles which have been appearing lately are such as to render the paper unsuitable to be exposed on the bookstalls for...
Reception Dora Marsden
Sales of the bimonthly New Freewoman remained low (about 400 copies per issue), a consequence of its appeal to a limited audience and the continued ban by W. H. Smith . It was kept alive...

Timeline

1792: H. W. Smith and Anna Smith opened a newsagents'...

Writing climate item

1792

H. W. Smith and Anna Smith opened a newsagents' shop in Little Grosvenor Street, London; out of this initial enterprise grew the publishing firm of W. H. Smith .
Rose, Jonathan, and Patricia J. Anderson, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 106. Gale Research, 1991.
106: 278
Feather, John. A History of British Publishing. Croom Helm, 1988.
136

6 July 1885: The first instalment of W. T. Stead's Maiden...

Writing climate item

6 July 1885

The first instalment of W. T. Stead 's Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, exposing the alleged sale of young girls in prostitution.
Walkowitz, Judith R. ’We Are Not Beasts of the Field’: Prostitution and the Campaign Against the Contagious Diseases Acts, 1869-1886. University of Rochester, 1974.
131
Walkowitz, Judith R. City of Dreadful Delight. University of Chicago Press, 1992.
81-3, 101

27 June 1894: Mudie's Circulating Library and bookseller...

Writing climate item

27 June 1894

Mudie's Circulating Library and bookseller W. H. Smith together announced they would not pay more than four shillings a volume for novels; this forced publishers to abandon triple-decker format, and quickly led to its replacement...

1908: W. H. Smith and Son bought the Arden Press...

Writing climate item

1908

W. H. Smith and Son bought the Arden Press and transferred business to Letchworth; the move signalled Smith's move into publishing.
Clair, Colin. A Chronology of Printing. Cassell, 1969.
170
Rose, Jonathan, and Patricia J. Anderson, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 106. Gale Research, 1991.
279

1982: Tim Waterstone launched a new UK bookshop...

Writing climate item

1982

Tim Waterstone launched a new UK bookshop chain called Waterstone's , with the aim of offering a larger range of titles than his competitors.
Kean, Danuta. “The end of the affair”. The Author, Vol.
cxvi
, No. 4, 1 Dec.–28 Feb. 2005, pp. 145-7.
145

By 11 May 2002: John Murray, publishers of Austen and Byron...

Writing climate item

By 11 May 2002

John Murray , publishers of Austen and Byron among many others, and one of the few independent publishers remaining after rapid change in the industry, sold out to bookselling chain W. H. Smith .
Reynolds, Nigel. Last chapter as oldest publisher is bought out,, 11 May 2002. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/05/11/nmurr11.xml.

Texts

Harris, Mary J. Y. Memoirs of Frances Mary Peard. W. H. Smith, 1930.