Theodore Thomas MacDonald established T. T. MacDonald in London in 1938, to publish cheap hardback editions of novels. A printing company, Purnell and Sons, took over the firm in 1940, and in October 1942 it became Macdonald and Company (Publishers). Some popular novels published by Macdonald achieved outstanding commercial success, notably Kathleen Windsor's Forever Amber in 1945, and many of the novels of Catherine Cookson. During the 1950s and 1960s the company greatly expanded its publishing lists by purchasing a number of other publishing houses, including Sampson, Low, Marston and Company. While continuing its traditional line of fiction, the company also became a general hardback publisher. In 1973 a paperback subsidiary, Futura, was founded.
MacDonald was the first publisher of the early work of Randolph Stow, and had a best-seller with Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds in 1977.
Purnell merged with Hazell Sun in 1964 to become the British Printing Corporation (BPC), the parent company for its publishing interests. Robert Maxwell took over BPC in 1982, which in 1987 became Maxwell Communication Corporation (MCC) and Maxwell Pergamon Publishing Corporation (MPPC, from 1991 Maxwell Macmillan Publishing Corporation). Macdonald continued as a general hardback publisher, and as a paperback publisher with the imprints Futura, Optima, Orbit, Sphere, Cardinal and Abacus. With the dissolution of the Maxwell publishing empire in 1992, these imprints ceased or were scattered among other publishing groups.
