In 1936 Robert Hale set up his business at Clerkenwell House in London's Clerkenwell Green. Since then the Robert Hale imprint has had a particular focus on general hardback fiction, biography and practical reference. Among the company's earliest publications of Australian works were The Hand in the Dark, Gay Prelude, and The Strange Case of Mary Bryant.
Robert Hale Publishing is also well-known for its Black Horse Westerns imprint which emerged in the late 1960s. Marketed towards the library trade these titles are invariably published in small hardback editions (the Black Horse imprint is published in the USA by Ulverscroft).
In 1993 Robert Hale acquired NAG Press, a publishing house dating back to 1929. This purchase provided its new owner with an extensive backlist of books ranging across such fields as horology, gemmology, jewellery, precious metals in the British market and the English language. The list of gemmological titles was further expanded in 2008 when the company purchased all the titles published in this field by the Butterworth-Heinemann imprint of Elsevier.
Another publishing acquisition by the company occurred in 1999 when it did a deal with J. A. Allen, recognised internationally as the leading publisher of equestrian books.
Robert Hale ceased trading as a publisher on 1 December 2015. Robert Hale (and its imprints, including Black Horse Westerns continues as imprints of The Crowood Press.
