Vizetelly and Company was established in London in 1880 by Henry Vizetelly and his sons Frank and Arthur. Vizetelly had trained as a wood engraver and had been in business in London from the 1840s as an engraver and printer. An artist and printer of note, he had developed a distinctive method of coloured printing from wood blocks, and in the 1850s was known for the quality of his coloured printing by chromolithography. He assisted to found the Illustrated London News in 1842 and a number of other weekly pictorial journals, notably the Illustrated Times (1855).
Vizetelly and Company published cheap editions of popular novels in single volumes for the mass market. Many of these were translations of European novels, made available for the first time in largely unexpurgated form to the English public. In 1888 and 1889 Henry Vizetelly was twice tried and convicted for obscene libel for publishing particular passages in the work of some French novelists, including Maupassant, Bourget and Zola, and served three months in prison. The trials and associated publicity ruined the business and it closed in 1889.
