Jonathan Cape
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| Parent company | Random House |
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| Founded | 1921 |
| Founder | Herbert Jonathan Cape, Wren Howard |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Headquarters location | London |
| Publication types | Books |
Jonathan Cape was a London publishing firm founded in 1921 by Herbert Jonathan Cape. He was head of the firm until his death in 1960.
Cape and his business partner Wren Howard set up the publishing house in 1921. They established a reputation for high quality design and production and a fine list of English-language authors, fostered by the firm's editor and reader Edward Garnett. Cape's list of writers ranged from poets including Robert Frost and C Day Lewis, to children's authors such as Hugh Lofting and Arthur Ransome, to James Bond novels by Ian Fleming, to heavyweight fiction by James Joyce and T E Lawrence.
After Cape's death, the firm later merged successively with three other London publishing houses. In 1987 it was taken over by Random House in 1987. Its name continues as one of Random House's British imprints.
Herbert Jonathan Cape was born in London on 15 November 1879, the youngest of the seven children of Jonathan Cape, a clerk from Ireby in what is now Cumbria, and his wife Caroline, née Page. He received a basic schooling and in his early teens he was taken on by Hatchards bookshop in Piccadilly as an errand-boy.
Four years later, in 1899, Cape joined the London office of the American publishers Harper and Brothers, where he worked, successively, as clerk, general utility man and travelling salesman, first in the provinces and later in London. In 1904 he joined the publishing house of Duckworth as London traveller, and from 1911 as manager. In 1914, on the outbreak of the Great War, he took over the sole charge of the business when the proprietor, Gerald Duckworth, was absent on war duties. In 1915 Duckworth returned. In December of that year Cape joined the army, serving for the rest of the war.
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