Book Modern Romantic English writers, artists and imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper - Thames & Hudson

England had a bad reputation among modernist students for its shiny, fast-paced future. While battles over contemporary art and society took place in Paris and Spain, it seemed that John Betjeman and John Piper fell in love with the provincial world of old churches and tea rooms. Alexandra Harris tells a different story. In the 1930s and 1940s, artists and writers explored what it meant to be now and in England. Eclectic, passionate, witty, and diligent, they showed that “modernists” did not have to wage war with the past. Their “modernism” was as old as the hills. Constructivists and conservatives could work together, and even Bauhaus emigrants like László Moholy-Nagy were delighted to photograph Betjeman’s nostalgic Oxford University box. A rich network of personal and cultural encounters provided the backdrop for the contemporary English renaissance. This grand, inventive project was the work of writers, painters, gardeners, architects, critics, tourists, and composers. John Piper left behind purist abstracts to create wind-scratched collages on the stormy coast; Virginia Woolf wrote in her last novel about a rural competition on a summer exhibition day. Romantic Moderns gathers a large, fascinating group of original thinkers, some canonical and some nearly forgotten, but all deserving of our attention. Florence White collected regional recipes; Christopher Tunnard designed modern gardens in the style of the 18th century. Evelyn Waugh, Elizabeth Bowen, and the Sitwells are part of this story, along with Bill Brandt, Graham Sutherland, Eric Ravilious, and Cecil Beaton. Throughout their work, there is a celebration of locality and often a mischievous English climate. But the strongest theme of all is the fascination with finding—or imagining—possible homes. These are artists in exile, creating places to which we all belong.

The Thames & Hudson brand was founded in 1949 by Walter and Eva Neurath. Their greatest passion and mission was to create a “museum without walls” and to make the world of art, as well as leading scientific research, accessible to a broad audience. To reflect international perspectives, the company’s name combined the rivers flowing through London and New York, represented in its logo by two dolphins symbolizing friendship and intelligence, one facing east, the other west, suggesting a connection between the Old World and the New.

Today, still an independent family company, Thames & Hudson is one of the world’s leading publishers of illustrated books, with over 2,000 titles printed. It publishes high-quality books across all areas of visual creativity: fine arts (fine, applied, decorative, and performing arts), architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and music, as well as archaeology, history, and popular culture. It is also expanding its list of children’s books. Headquartered in London with a sister company in New York and branches in Melbourne, Singapore, and Hong Kong. In Paris, another subsidiary, Interart, distributes English-language books in France.

History of Thames & Hudson

Walter Neurath was born in Vienna in 1903. In 1938, he left his hometown—where he ran an art gallery and published illustrated books—for London. Initially, he worked as a production director at Adprint, a company founded by Viennese émigré Wolfgang Foges. Neurath and Foges developed a pioneering concept of what is now called book packaging (or co-publishing), where ideas for books are developed, commissioned, produced, and sold to publishers operating in different markets and languages, to create large editions and thus reduce unit production costs. Neurath’s concept was the first of many innovations that Thames & Hudson introduced to the publishing world.

Seeking to continue book packaging in a second edition and recognizing the need to amortize the high costs of producing illustrated books, Neurath founded his own publishing house, with offices in London and New York, in the fall of 1949. Eva Neurath, who arrived in London from Berlin in 1939, was a co-founder.

Of the ten titles published on the first list by Thames & Hudson in 1950, *English Cathedrals*, with photographs by Martin Hürlimann, were the first and achieved the greatest success. The firm’s strong conviction from the very beginning regarding the longevity of books remained in print until 1971. In the first year of publication, Albert Einstein’s *Out of My Later Years* also appeared, an early indicator of the program’s breadth. As the list gradually expanded—growing from ten titles in 1950 to 144 in 1955—the company moved its offices to High Holborn and in 1956 relocated to a Georgian townhouse at 30 Bloomsbury Street, near Bedford Square, becoming the epicenter of book publishing in London. The manufacturing remained at this address, eventually expanding to five houses by 1999, when it returned to High Holborn.

In 1958, Thames & Hudson launched one of its most renowned series, World of Art, which became the foundation of a highly diverse list. Characterized by pocket-sized editions and black spines, the series expanded in just seven years to include 49 titles. Nearly 60 years later, the series boasts over 300 titles, which, according to Christopher Frayling, are “stained with paint copies” in every art school across the country.

Other important series that added depth and prestige to the list include *Ancient People and Places*, edited by Glyn Daniel, who from the 1950s contributed to pioneering interest in archaeology, both in book form and television. Over 34 titles have been published in this series over 34 years. The large-format *Great Civilizations* series, published in 1961, featured contributions from esteemed scholars such as Alan Bullock, Asa Briggs, Hugh Trevor-Roper, A. J. P. Taylor, and John Julius Norwich.
After building one of the most significant publishing houses in Europe in less than two decades, Walter Neurath died in 1967 at the age of 63. Sculptor Henry Moore wrote that “his death was a loss to our cultural life.” Sir Herbert Read noted that Neurath “more than anyone else was responsible for the revolution in art publishing” and was “one of those rare entrepreneurs who successfully combine business acumen with idealism.” Eva Neurath became chairwoman. Walter’s son, Thomas, who joined the company in 1961 along with his sister Constance, became managing director; Constance later served as artistic director for several decades. Both Thomas and Constance remain on the Thames & Hudson board, as do Thomas’s daughters, Johanna and Susanna.
From producing the first commercial edition of *The Book of Kells* to the triumphant publication of the six-volume *Vincent van Gogh – Letters*, from technical innovations like “French folds” to the controversial documentation of graffiti art in *Subway Art*, Thames & Hudson has always been at the forefront, both culturally and in production techniques.

2016 marked the beginning of an extraordinary new chapter for the company, announcing publishing partnerships with two of the world’s most important museums: the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The art world and scholarship thus remain at the heart of Thames & Hudson’s publishing program, which remains true to its fundamental principle: providing a “museum without walls.”

Today, Thames & Hudson is a recognizable international brand, a symbol of British publishing. Its extensive catalog includes thousands of incredible book titles, many of which are elite collectible editions.

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