Simpkin & Marshall


Simpkin & Marshall was a British bookseller, wholesaler and publisher. The firm was founded in 1819 and traded until the 1940s. For many decades the firm was Britain's largest book wholesaler and a respected family-owned company, but it was acquired by the media proprietor Robert Maxwell and went bankrupt in 1954, an event which, according to Lionel Leventhal, "sounded a warning to the book trade about Captain Robert Maxwell's way of doing business".

19th century

In the years just before 1814 Benjamin Crosby and two assistants, William Simpkin and Richard Marshall, ran a firm "supplying provincial firms with books and acting as an agent for their publications". Following Crosby's illness with paralysis in 1814, the firm became known as Simpkin and Marshall.
In 1828 the firm changed its name to Simpkin, Marshall & Co. and in 1837 it was based at Stationers' Hall Court, London. The firm became the largest book wholesaler in the United Kingdom.
In 1889 the three firms, Simpkin, Marshall & Co. Hamilton, Adams & Co., and W. Kent & Co., merged to form Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. The firm was, however, still generally referred to by the general public as Simpkin & Marshall. By 1900 the firm enjoyed "almost monopoly status as a book wholesaler".
As a book publisher Simpkin & Marshall was a generalist, with numerous fiction and nonfiction titles. In the second half of the nineteenth century it published many yellowback and paperback books, including the series "The Run and Read Library", the "Bristol Library" and "almost all of the novels" of the popular Victorian novelist Mary E. Braddon.

Acquisition by Robert Maxwell

In the early 1950s Simpkin Marshall, as the firm was then commonly known, was a book wholesaler with debts of $A575,000. Robert Maxwell purchased it for the sum of $A115,000 and it continued to operate as a publishing warehouse company and a wholesale book distribution company within his business empire. He used the company to raise funds, on which it paid interest, but then made generous interest-free loans to his private companies. In four years, he "ran the company into the ground". According to Edward Pearce, Maxwell had used the "high reputation of the old-fashioned family company he had taken over... for purposes of predatory credit". Simpkin, Marshall was declared insolvent in 1954 and its assets and good will were purchased by Hatchards.

Book series

Book series published by Simpkin & Marshall and by Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. included:
  • The Abbey Classics
  • The Analytical Series of Greek and Latin Classics
  • Anglers' Evenings
  • Beacon Library
  • The Beechwood Books
  • Breare Vocal Series
  • The Bygone Series
  • Clark's College Series of Text-Books
  • Crossley's Comprehensive Class Book
  • Curtis's Educational Series
  • The Devotional Series
  • Dr. Cornwell's Educational Series
  • Echoes of Exmoor
  • Edinburgh Series of Monographs on Art
  • Eton School Lists
  • Evergreen Library Series
  • Farming Essays
  • Gill's School Series
  • The Gravure Series
  • The Guide Series
  • Hardwicke's Science-Gossip: An Illustrated Medium of Interchange and Gossip for Studies and Lovers of Nature
  • Historic Houses in Bath and Their Associations
  • In Tune With Nature
  • Irish Texts Society
  • Kind Words to All Classes
  • The Jane Series
  • Jerrold's Jest Book Series
  • Kneetime Animal Stories
  • Lancashire Worthies
  • Library Association Series
  • Medieval Studies
  • The 101 Series
  • Old Friends And New Acquaintances
  • Our Country's Series
  • Oxberry's New English Drama Series
  • Poems of Eliza Cook
  • Popular Edition
  • Popular Music Series
  • Popular School Books Series
  • The Quiet Hour Series
  • Railroadiana
  • The Repertory of Patent Inventions, and other discoveries & improvements in Arts, Manufactures, and Agriculture
  • Rosemary Booklets
  • The Run and Read Library
  • Seventy Sermon Outlets
  • Simpkin's Thin-paper Classics
  • Simple Records
  • Tales of a Grandfather: Being Stories Taken from Scottish History
  • Then and Now
  • Tourist Rambles in the Northern and Midland Counties
  • Towards New Culture
  • Walbran's British Angler Salmon, Trout and Grayling: How, When and Where to Catch Them
  • Walbran's British Wrangler
  • The Waverley Novels
  • The Women of The Poets

Series jointly published with other publishers