Swan Sonnenschein & Co.

Born in 1855, William Swan Sonnenschein trained in the book trade before founding his own firm in London in 1878 with J. Archibald Allen. After the partnership ended, the business was renamed W. Swan Sonnenschein & Co. in 1882, the imprint most readers now recognize.

Sources consulted for this overview describe the company as a notable publisher of scholarly and educational works, especially in philosophy and the social sciences. The firm is also remembered for publishing major reference projects, including The Best Books, which reflected Sonnenschein's strong interest in bibliography as well as publishing.

Although the company name is often better known than the man behind it, Sonnenschein's career shows how much one energetic publisher could shape intellectual reading in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century. He died in 1930, but his imprint remains a familiar one in older catalogs and on many classic books.