Daniel Hurst, a junior partner at Henry Colburn, bought Colburn's business in 1852 and joined in partnership with Henry Blackett to form Hurst and Blackett. The partnership continued Colburn's practice of publishing cheap editions of popular novels. It published most of the well-known popular English novelists of the Victorian period, many of them in first editions. The firm was successful in capturing a market of women readers, of domestic fiction, popular romance and sensational fiction.
Hurst and Blackett broadened its lists in the twentieth century to included travel and entertainment industry books, books on politics, and biographies. The firm was purchased by Hutchinson and Company in the 1920s, where it continued as an imprint until the mid-1970s.
