Having worked at Jonathan Cape and Harper and Row, Hamish Hamilton established his own publishing house in Bloomsbury in 1931. Over the next fifty years, he developed a diverse and distinguished list of literary authors. Other successes were the Novel Library series of reprints, a strong fiction and non-fiction chldren's list after 1968, and a successful specialist subsidiary, Elm Tree books.
Hamish Hamilton sold the firm to Thomson Publications in 1966 but retained an active involvement in the company until his death in 1988. Penguin bought Hamish Hamilton book-publishing division from Thomson in 1985 and it was entirely absorbed into Penguin in 1989, where it remained as an imprint.
