Geoffrey Bles
| David Geoffrey Bles | |
|---|---|
| Born |
David Geoffrey Bles 5 September 1886 Chorley, Cheshire, England |
| Died | 3 April 1957 (aged 70) London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Merton College, Oxford |
| Occupation | Publisher |
| Spouse(s) | Evelyn Constance Halse |
David Geoffrey Bles (1886–1957) was a British publisher, with a reputation for spotting new talent, who started his eponymous publishing firm in London in 1923, and published the first five books of C.S. Lewis' Narnia series.
Bles read Greats at Merton College, Oxford, followed by entry to the Indian Civil Service. During the First World War he was commissioned into the Indian Army Reserve of Officers in October 1917 and was attached to the 17th Cavalry, Indian Army, in November 1917. He served in the Political Department in Mesopotamia in 1918 before demobilization in June 1919 and returning to the Indian Civil Service. On 3 January 1920, he married Miss Evelyn Constance Halse.
Bles entered publishing in 1923. Geoffrey Bles Limited were general publishers, but with a specialism in religion and translated works. Among the authors Bles published were C.S. Lewis, J.B. Phillips, Cecil Street, Halliday Sutherland, Vicki Baum, and Maria von Trapp. Baum's Grand Hotel (1930), originally published in German, was a huge commercial success for Bles.
Bles was introduced to C.S. Lewis through his employee Ashley Sampson (1900–1947) who owned the Centenary Press. Bles bought that company and merged it with his own thus acquiring Lewis as an author. Lewis's key religious work, The Problem of Pain, was published jointly by Bles and Centenary Press in 1940, as were his Beyond Personality: The Christian Idea of God (1944) and The Great Divorce: A Dream (1945).
Bles published on his own, Lewis's The Screwtape Letters (1942), The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) and the next four in the Narnia series up to The Horse and his Boy (1954), but for the last two books in the series Lewis moved to Bodley Head.
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