Collins

About Collins

Collins is the Glasgow publishing house founded in 1819 by William Collins, a Presbyterian schoolmaster, in partnership with Charles Chalmers; since 1990 it has been part of HarperCollins, where Collins continues as an imprint.

The firm began as a printer and publisher of religious and educational books. It issued its first dictionary in 1824 and its first atlas in 1856, and took the name William Collins, Sons and Co in 1868. It moved into fiction from 1917 under Sir Godfrey Collins.

For collectors the key period is the Collins Crime Club, which ran from 1930 to 1994. Collins became Agatha Christie's British publisher in 1926 and published all but her first six novels, so most Poirot and Marple first editions carry its imprint. It also published the first UK edition of T. H. White's The Sword in the Stone in 1938.

News Corporation bought a 40% stake in 1981 and became sole owner in 1989. In 1990 Collins was combined with the American publisher Harper & Row to form HarperCollins.

How to spot a Collins first edition

• Collins did not adopt any special method of marking first editions or first impressions, according to its statements to H. S. Boutell.
• Collins said that when it issued a cheaper edition, the reverse of the title page recorded the date of the original edition and that of the cheap edition.