- William Heinemann
William Heinemann (
18 May 1863 –5 October 1920 ) was the founder of the Heinemann publishing house inLondon .He was born in 1863, in
Surbiton ,Surrey . In his early life he wanted to be a musician, either as a performer or a composer, but, realising that he lacked the ability to be successful in that field, he took a job with the music publishing company ofNicolas Trübner . It was an intensive apprenticeship, and when Trübner died, Heinemann founded his own publishing house inCovent Garden in 1890. The company introduced many translations of the classics toGreat Britain , as well as such distinguished authors asH. G. Wells ,Robert Louis Stevenson , andRudyard Kipling .He died, unexpectedly, in
London in 1920. He had no children and his presumptive heir, his nephew John Heinemann, had died in the Great War. Heinemann's share of the company was therefore bought out by F.N. Doubleday, the New York publisher.He bequeathed funds to the
Royal Society of Literature to establish a literary prize, theW. H. Heinemann Award , given from 1945 to 2003.The company logo is based on a woodcut by
Sir William Nicholson of the windmill atRottingdean , Sussex.ources
* Linda Marie Fritschner, ‘Heinemann, William (1863–1920)’, "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33800, accessed 15 June 2006]
External links
* [http://www.heinemann.com/ Heinemann website]
* [http://www.rslit.org/prizes/heinemann.php W. H. Heinemann Award]
*worldcat id|lccn-n81-125390
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