William Heinemann

William Heinemann (born May 18, 1863, Surbiton, Surrey, Eng.—died Oct. 5, 1920, London) was an English publisher whose firm published outstanding contemporary fiction and drama, introduced translations of important works of European literature to Great Britain, and produced inexpensive translations of classical Greek and Roman texts.

Heinemann studied music in England and Germany but decided instead to become a publisher and served his apprenticeship with a British publishing house. In 1890 he established in London the firm that bears his name. Three years later he was joined by a partner, Sydney Pawling.

In the years that followed, Heinemann’s firm became famous for its outstanding fiction list. Authors included Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Max Beerbohm, John Masefield, John Galsworthy, Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, and Somerset Maugham. He published plays as well, including those of Sir Arthur Pinero and Maugham.

Heinemann’s International Library of translations, under the editorship of Sir Edmund Gosse, made important works in French, Spanish, German, and Italian available to British readers for the first time. He also commissioned Constance Garnett to translate works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan Turgenev, and Leo Tolstoy into English; these translations greatly influenced the English novel during the early 20th century. He also published English-language versions of the plays of Henrik Ibsen and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. Another important contribution was Heinemann’s publication of the Loeb Classical Library, in which Greek and Latin texts were printed with English translations on the facing page, in uniform format at a modest price.