The Strange Success of Faber & Faber

Also: A.N. Wilson’s regrets, in praise of Bloomsbury layabouts, and more.

Faber & Faber

The publishing house Faber & Faber became an unlikely success in the 1930s. It was founded in 1925 by Geoffrey Faber and Sir Maurice Gwyer, whose wife, Alsina, inherited controlling shares of the Scientific Press, which published medical textbooks and the magazine The Nursing Mirror. The press was renamed Faber & Gwyer, and T.S. Eliot was hired as editorial director. Over the next 30 years, he would transform the firm into a profitable and highly esteemed literary publisher.