Michael Joseph (publisher)

Michael Joseph (26 September 1897 – 15 March 1958) was a British publisher and writer.

Joseph was born in Upper Clapton, London. He served in the British Army during the First World War, and then embarked on a writing career, his first book being Short Story Writing for Profit (1923).

After a period as a literary agent for Curtis Brown, Joseph founded his own publishing imprint as a subsidiary of Victor Gollancz Ltd. Gollancz invested £4000 in Michael Joseph Ltd, established 5 September 1935. Joseph and Victor Gollancz disagreed on many points and Michael Joseph bought out Gollancz Ltd in 1938 after Gollancz attempted to censor Across the Frontiers by Sir Philip Gibbs on political grounds. (Joseph published the first edition in 1938 and a revised edition the following May.) Among the authors Joseph published were H. E. Bates, C. S. Forester, Monica Dickens, Richard Llewellyn, Joyce Cary, Richard Gordon and Vita Sackville-West.

Joseph and Hermione Gingold married in 1918 and had two sons, Leslie and Stephen Joseph. (The Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, established by the latter in 1955, was Britain's first theatre in the round.) The couple divorced in 1926 and Joseph promptly married Edna Victoria Nellie Frost, with whom he had a daughter Shirley and son Richard. She died in 1949 and Joseph's third marriage the next year was to Anthea Esther Hodson, with whom he had a daughter Charlotte and son Hugh.

He died of septicaemia after a delayed medical operation in 1958 and his widow Anthea Joseph rescued the company from the following crisis.
In 1985, Michael Joseph Ltd was acquired by Penguin Books.

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