Dent

About Dent

Dent (J. M. Dent) is a London publisher founded in 1888 by the bookbinder Joseph Malaby Dent, best known for the Everyman's Library series of classics and now an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group.

Dent, born in Darlington in 1849, moved to London in 1867 and set up as a bookbinder, then started J. M. Dent and Company in 1888 at 69 Great Eastern Street. The firm became J. M. Dent & Sons in 1909. Its early successes were well-made, inexpensive editions: the Temple Shakespeare (1894, a shilling a volume) and the Temple Classics (from 1896). Aubrey Beardsley illustrated Dent's The Birth Life and Acts of King Arthur (1893 to 1894).

Everyman's Library, edited by Ernest Rhys, launched in 1906 with 152 titles in its first year and a 1928 advertisement claimed more than 800 volumes. After J. M. Dent died in 1926 his sons Hugh and Jack, and later his grandson F. J. Martin Dent, ran the business.

Dent also published new work, including C. S. Lewis's The Pilgrim's Regress (1933), Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes (1936, illustrated by Ruth Gervis) and Mary Norton's The Borrowers (1952, illustrated by Diana L. Stanley), which won the Carnegie Medal.

Weidenfeld & Nicolson bought Dent in January 1988, and Dent became an Orion imprint when Orion took over Weidenfeld. The Everyman's Library hardback rights were sold in 1991 and the series is now published by Penguin Random House.