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New English Library Industry Book publishing Predecessor
Ace Books Ltd
Four Square Books Ltd
Founded 1961; 63 years ago (1961 ) Defunct 2004 (2004 ) Fate Merged with
Hodder & Stoughton Headquarters
Defunct United Kingdom book publishing company
The New English Library was a
United Kingdom book publishing company, which became an imprint of
Hodder Headline .
History
New English Library (NEL) was created in 1961 by the Times Mirror Company of Los Angeles, with the takeover of two small British paperback companies, Ace Books Ltd and Four Square Books Ltd, as a complement to its 1960 acquisition of
New American Library in the United States.
[1] NEL's top bestseller of the 1960s was
The Carpetbaggers by
Harold Robbins .
[2]
The imprint was sold in 1981 to
Hodder & Stoughton ,
[3] and became part of the merged
Hodder Headline in 1993.
It has published
genres such as
fantasy ,
science fiction ,
mystery and
suspense .
[4] They have published the works of
Stephen King ,
Harold Robbins ,
James Herbert and science fiction authors have included
Brian Aldiss ,
Frank Herbert ,
Robert A. Heinlein ,
Michael Moorcock and
Christopher Priest . New English Library titles were particularly popular in the early 1970s, when
hack writers were hired to work under names such as
Richard Allen and Mick Norman to churn out tales of
Hells Angels and
skinheads . These older New English Library books have some cult following, especially in the UK.
[5]
The brand continued as a mass-market imprint for Hodder Headline, focussing on thrillers and horror, until 2004 when it was dropped following Hodder's assimilation into the
Hachette Livre group, and a single
Hodder & Stoughton paperback list was created, combining the NEL titles then in print with those in Hodder's previous Coronet (mainstream) and Flame (young and contemporary) paperback lines.
[6]
Book series
Burke's Series
The Carter Brown Mystery Series
Dictionary of Battles series
The Edge Series
Four Square Adventures
Four Square Gothic Mystery
Four Square Library
[7]
Four Square Classics
[8]
Four Square Science Fiction
[9]
The Great Histories
History of Aviation Series
The Island Guidebook Series
NEL Mentor
NEL Modern Classics
NEL Paperbacks
NEL SF Master Series
[10]
New English Library Classic Novel Series
New English Library Military History Series
The Olympia Press Traveller's Companion Series
Projekt Saucer Series
Trains and Railways Special Publications
References
^ Thomas L. Bonn,
Uneasy Lie the Heads: New American Library in Transition in Fred Kobrak, Beth Luey (eds.), The Structure of International Publishing in the 1990s , Transaction Publishers, 1992.
^ Andrew Wilson, Harold Robbins: The Man Who Invented Sex . New York: Bloomsbury, 2007, p. 153.
^
Ion Trewin ,
Philip Attenborough obituary ,
The Independent , 7 April 2006
^
"WriteWords: New English Library" . Retrieved 24 May 2006 .
^ Gary Dobbs,
"Great Paperback Publishers: New English Library" , tainted-archive.blogspot.com.au. Retrieved on 24 October 2016.
^ Nicholas Clee,
"The Bookseller" ,
The Guardian , 25 September 2004.
^
Four Square Books (Four Square Books; New English Library) - Book Series List , publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
^
Four Square Classics (New English Library Ltd.) - Book Series List , publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
^
Old Pan/NEL books - complete list of titles , sffchronicles.com. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
^
Publication Series: NEL SF Master Series , isfdb.org. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
Further reading
Justin Marriott (ed.) (Nov. 2010), A Visual Guide to New English Library: Volume One . A5, 88 pp.