Longmans, Green, and Co.

Thomas Longman (1699-1755) bought the stock and business of the London bookseller William Taylor — the first publisher of Robinson Crusoe — in August 1724, and the house that grew out of it became the longest-lived name in English publishing.¹ The imprint accreted partners for two centuries, from T. Longman through the unwieldy Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, settling as Longmans, Green and Co. by about 1880 and holding that form until 1926.¹ The list ran from Johnson's Dictionary and Macaulay's History of England to school texts and encyclopaedias.¹ The Paternoster Row offices burned in the Blitz in December 1940; the firm went public in 1948 and was bought by Pearson in 1968, ending family control.¹ Under the Longmans, Green name it issued the first English edition of Herman Bavinck's Stone Lectures, The Philosophy of Revelation, in 1909.