Archibald Constable and Company was founded in 1890 by Archibald Constable, a grandson of the nineteenth century Edinburgh publisher. Archibald Constable retired in 1893 and for the next seventy years the publishing house was run as an independent company by a range of able directors, including H. Arthur Doubleday, Otto Kyllmann, William Maxsee Meredith, Ralph Arnold, and Michael Sadleir. The company name changed to Constable and Company Limited in 1910.
A conservative and traditional publisher, Constable published serious non-fiction and literary fiction. It made its reputation by publishing the work of a number of great writers, such as George Meredith, George Bernard Shaw, Walter De la Mare, Harold Nicholson and Lord David Cecil. Australian writers published by Constable included Martin Boyd, Dymphna Cusack, Mary Durack, Geraldine Halls and Russell Braddon. The company's children's list, developed from 1957, included Joan Phipson, Barbara Ker Wilson and Leon Garfield.
Constable and Company Ltd was purchased by Ben Glazebrook in 1962. In 1999, it merged with the Robinson Publishing Company to form Constable and Robinson. In 2014, it was published by Little, Brown Book Group, who preserved 'Constable' as an imprint title.
