Heinemann Educational Books

The University of Reading holds the Heinemann Education Books archive which was transferred in 1987 and then subsequent deposits were accepted. The William Heinemann archive is held by Random House.

There are two series of catalogued Heinemann archives at the University of Reading, Special Collections: The African Writers Series and New Windmill.

In 1962 Heinemann the African Writers Series began with the publication of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart in paperback. Heinemann published African fiction, poetry and drama. 270 titles were published by 1985. The University of Reading, Special Collections holds 617 editorial and correspondence files mainly relating to the African Writers series with some miscellaneous files which have been catalogued relating to the Asian and Caribbean Writers series.

Heinemann was founded in 1890 as William Heinemann Ltd. On Heinemann's death in 1920, One half of the company was purchased by the U.S. publisher, Doubleday. Doubleday?s interest was then sold back to the British directors of Heinemann during the Wall Street crash in 1929. Windmill Press, Kingswood, Surrey was the headquarters of distribution, accounting and promotion activities of the Heinemann Group of Companies. Heinemann was purchased by the Octopus Publishing Group in 1985. Octopus was purchased by Reed International (now Reed Elsevier) in 1987. Random House bought Heinemann's trade publishing (now named William Heinemann) in 1997.

Heinemann's educational unit grew into an independent company in 1961. It became part of Harcourt Education when Reed Elsevier purchased the company in 2001. Pearson purchased the UK, South African, Australian and New Zealand arms of Harcourt Education in May 2007. The American operations were purchased by Houghton Mifflin.