Originally published in 1955, From Swan Sonnenschein to George Allen & Unwin Ltd states that the lives of certain publishing houses are a direct reflection of the cultural history of the period in which they work. They draw their successes from the intellectual enthusiasms of the time and in no small measure contribute towards the education of their contemporaries. Of this sort of publisher no better examples could be found at the end of the nineteenth century than Swan Sonnenschein and George Allen. Both were men of serious purpose, with a sense of mission in their business activities. Sonnenschein, who later changed his name to Stallybrass, was the publisher of Bernard Shaw’s novels, of George Moore’s Confessions of a Young Man; the first English edition of Marx’s Capital; J. M. Barrie’s first novel, Better Dead; Edwards Carpenter’s Towards Democracy; and besides an immense list of books on Social Science – which were far ahead of their time – he launched, with Professor J. H. Muirhead, the famous Library of Philosophy.

George Allen’s business was founded exclusively upon Ruskin’s works, but later he published for Augustus Hare, Maurice Maeterlinck and Hillaire Belloc.

Such was the foundation upon which Stanley Unwin was able to build in 1914, when he acquired the assets of the combined firms of Sonnenschein and Allen.