Chatto & Windus (Firm)

Originating in 1855 in the publishing business founded by John Camden Hotten in London, Chatto & Windus took its familiar name after Hotten's death, when Andrew Chatto and the poet William Edward Windus reorganized the firm. Over time it built a strong reputation in literature, publishing writers including Mark Twain, Wilkie Collins, H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, Samuel Beckett, and the first English translation of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

The company also absorbed parts of other important literary traditions. In 1946 it took over the running of the Hogarth Press, linking it to the publishing legacy of Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Chatto & Windus remained an influential independent house for much of the twentieth century before merging with Jonathan Cape in 1969.

Today, Chatto & Windus survives as an imprint within Penguin Random House UK. Penguin describes it as its oldest continuous imprint, tracing its origins back to 1855, which gives it a special place in the history of British publishing.