Robert Hale Ltd was a London publisher (1936 to 2015) selling mainly to libraries, known for genre fiction, Jean Plaidy and topographical series. Its American titles are usually first UK editions.
Here "Hale" means Robert Hale Ltd of London; the sample titles include James Hadley Chase, John D. MacDonald and Jean Plaidy, all Hale authors.
Robert Hale, born in Norwich in 1887, had worked at John Long and Jarrolds before leaving Hutchinson in 1935 and starting his own firm in 1936. The first offices were in Great Russell Street, later Old Brompton Road, and from the mid-1970s Clerkenwell Green. Early books included work by Wyndham Lewis and a 1937 translation of a Brecht novel.
Robert Hale died in 1956 and his son John, then in his twenties, took charge for more than fifty years. He built up genre fiction on a large scale: crime, romance, westerns (later the Black Horse Western series) and, between 1968 and 1982, many science fiction hardbacks for public libraries. Hale published every one of Jean Plaidy's novels, the first four Harold Robbins titles in British hardback, and the first UK books of Robert Goddard and C. J. Box. Topographical lines included the County Books and the "Portrait of" volumes. The firm also took on NAG Press and the equestrian publisher J. A. Allen.
John Hale stepped back from active publishing in 2010. Robert Hale Ltd ceased trading on 1 December 2015 and its imprints passed to The Crowood Press, which closed the Black Horse Westerns in 2020.
Holding a copy? The first edition checker shows Hale's practice for the year on your title page.
Identification
How to identify Hale first editions
What to look for
Robert Hale sold mainly to public libraries, so many surviving copies are ex-library, and a clean copy in its jacket is the thing to look for. Hale often gave American books their first British appearance, and when the American original was a paperback the Hale issue is also the first hardback: John D. MacDonald's Border Town Girl (Hale, 1970) and Lawrence Block's The Sins of the Father (Hale, 1979) are examples. These are first UK editions, not true firsts.
1930s to 1960s
Hale hardbacks came in cloth or boards with a dust jacket printed with a price in shillings and pence (7/6 in the 1930s, 10/6 in the 1950s and early 1960s); a jacket with the price cut away is price-clipped.
1970s to 1990s
Jacket prices moved to decimal currency (for example £1.70 in 1973 and £5.50 in 1980), and dealers routinely note whether a jacket is price-clipped.
From 2016
Robert Hale Ltd stopped trading at the end of 2015 and its list moved to Crowood, so a book under the Hale name dated 2016 or later is a Crowood issue, not a first from the original firm.
Robert Hale sold mainly to public libraries, so many surviving copies are ex-library, and a clean copy in its jacket is the thing to look for. Hale often gave American books their first British appearance, and when the American original was a paperback the Hale issue is also the first hardback: John D. MacDonald's Border Town Girl (Hale, 1970) and Lawrence Block's The Sins of the Father (Hale, 197
How many Hale books does MyVolumes track?
We track 135 editions published by Hale, 55 of them first editions, across 135 books.
