Publisher
Fourth Estate
London literary publisher founded by Victoria Barnsley in 1984 and part of HarperCollins since 2000, home of Mantel's Wolf Hall. Many of its American titles are UK firsts that followed a US first.
- Editions tracked
- 122
- First editions
- 31
- Books
- 120
- Years
- 1987 to 2026
Fourth Estate is a publisher active from 1987. We track 122 editions it published between 1987 and 2026, 31 of them first editions across 120 books. How Fourth Estate marked its first editions is set out below, with a checker for the year on your title page.
About Fourth Estate
Fourth Estate (styled 4th Estate) is a London literary publisher founded in 1984 by Victoria Barnsley and owned since 2000 by HarperCollins, where it publishes Hilary Mantel, Jonathan Franzen, Annie Proulx and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
The firm started in Notting Hill on a very small budget as an independent publisher. By the time HarperCollins completed its purchase in July 2000 it had annual sales of about 7.5 million pounds, a staff of 36 and roughly 100 new titles a year. Barnsley became chief executive and publisher of HarperCollins UK, while Fourth Estate kept its own management as a division of the group. A US Fourth Estate imprint was planned at the time of the deal.
Its list runs from fiction to biography, polemic and cookery. It published Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies, both Booker Prize winners, and it is the British home of Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See, and Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies. Other authors include Michael Chabon, Jeffrey Eugenides, Nigel Slater and Ben Goldacre. Today it operates from HarperCollins' offices at the News Building, London Bridge.
Holding a copy? The first edition checker shows Fourth Estate's practice for the year on your title page.
Identification
How to identify Fourth Estate first editions
Authors
Books
Published by Fourth Estate
Frequently asked questions
How do I identify a Fourth Estate first edition?
How many Fourth Estate books does MyVolumes track?
We track 122 editions published by Fourth Estate, 31 of them first editions, across 120 books.
Where these facts come from
- About 4th Estate, 4th Estate (4thestate.co.uk)
- HarperCollins Acquires U.K. Publisher Fourth Estate, Publishers Weekly, 2000 (publishersweekly.com)
- Mantel, Hilary, Wolf Hall, signed and lined first edition, First and Fine (firstandfine.com)
- Annie E. Proulx, The Shipping News, First UK Edition 1994, John Atkinson Books (johnatkinsonbooks.co.uk)
- The Shipping News, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- Freedom (Jonathan Franzen), First Place Books (firstplacebooks.com)
- Franzen's new novel to be pulped, The National, 2010 (thenationalnews.com)
Every fact on this page was checked against the sources listed. Checked 22 October 2026. Reviewed by Harriet Ellis; read how we check facts.