Allison & Busby

About Allison & Busby

Allison & Busby is an independent London publisher founded in May 1967 by Clive Allison and Margaret Busby, whose early list ranged from writers of Africa, the Caribbean and Black America to crime and fantasy fiction.

Busby was then Britain's youngest publisher and the first Black woman to run a UK book publisher; she served as the firm's editorial director for twenty years. In 1969 the company set up in a friend's flat in Soho, and its first novel, Sam Greenlee's The Spook Who Sat by the Door, followed after many other publishers had turned it down.

Over the next two decades its authors included C. L. R. James, Buchi Emecheta, Chester Himes, George Lamming, Ishmael Reed, Rosa Guy, James Ellroy, Mervyn Peake and Michael Moorcock. It also gave Jill Murphy her start: The Worst Witch first appeared under the Allison & Busby imprint in 1974 and sold out its first printing within about two months.

In 1987 W. H. Allen bought the company and Busby left, though Allison stayed on for several more years. The imprint later became part of Virgin Publishing. It is now owned by Javier Moll's Spanish group Editorial Prensa Ibérica, and Wikidata gives its address as Wardour Mews in Soho. Its ISBN publisher prefixes include 978-0-85031 and 978-0-7490.