Granada

About Granada

Granada Publishing was the British book publishing arm of the Granada television and media group, set up in 1966 and sold to William Collins in 1983, whose paperback lines included Panther, Mayflower and Paladin.

Granada Group formed the business in 1966 to take over the London publisher Hour Press, and incorporated it as Granada Publishing Ltd in 1968. It gathered together companies the group had bought, including Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd (acquired 1963), MacGibbon & Kee (1968), Panther Books, Mayflower Books, Arco Publications and Staples Press; in 1972 it merged its two literary hardback houses as Hart-Davis, MacGibbon. In 1979 it added the London publisher Paul Elek, and in 1981 it created a subsidiary called Grafton, named after its Grafton Street address. It also distributed books for other publishers.

Paladin, Panther and Mayflower were its paperback lines, and the Granada name itself appears as a publisher on many UK paperback and hardback editions of the late 1970s and early 1980s, such as the 1983 UK first edition of Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two, which followed the Ballantine US first edition of December 1982.

In 1983 Granada Group left publishing and sold the business to William Collins, Sons & Co of Glasgow. Collins dropped the Granada name and grouped the paperback imprints under Grafton, a brand that lasted until about 1993. The residual company became Collins Video Ltd in 1988 and was dissolved in 1999. Collins itself became part of HarperCollins in 1989.