Edward Augustus Arnold worked for English publishing firms Richard Bentley and John Murray before establishing his own publishing business in 1890. In its first years the firm published a select list of general and text books, most of which Arnold commissioned. As the business grew it expanded into the publication of literary novels, notably with the work of E. M. Forster, and into travel, memoirs and politics.
The firm published little fiction after 1929, and specialised in academic and textbooks. In 1987 Edward Arnold became the educational, academic and professional division of Hodder and Stoughton. It continued as an imprint of Hodder Headline after that company merged with Headline in 1993, and after Hodder Headline became part of Hachette in 2004.
