Harvill Secker
Harvill Secker is a London literary imprint formed in 2005 from Secker & Warburg, Orwell's publisher, and the Harvill Press, owned by Penguin Random House and renamed Harvill in 2025.
- Editions tracked
- 38
- First editions
- 12
- Books
- 38
- Years
- 2005 to 2022
Harvill Secker is a publisher based in London, founded in 1936. We track 38 editions it published between 2005 and 2022, 12 of them first editions across 38 books. Each book lists its first edition and the points that identify it.
About Harvill Secker
Harvill Secker is a London literary imprint formed in 2005 by merging two older houses, Secker & Warburg and the Harvill Press, and owned by Penguin Random House; in 2025 it announced it would shorten its name to Harvill and concentrate on fiction.
Secker & Warburg was created in the mid-1930s (accounts give 1935 or 1936) when Fredric Warburg and Roger Senhouse took over Martin Secker's struggling firm. It took a firmly anti-fascist and anti-Soviet line and became George Orwell's publisher after he left Victor Gollancz, issuing Homage to Catalonia (1938) and Animal Farm (1945), a book other publishers had turned down. Its list also included C. L. R. James, Simone de Beauvoir and D. H. Lawrence. Weakened by post-war paper shortages, it joined the Heinemann group in 1951, and after passing through Octopus and Reed it reached Random House when that company bought Reed's adult trade publishing in 1997.
The Harvill Press was founded in 1946 by Manya Harari and Marjorie Villiers. It was owned by Collins (later HarperCollins), regained independence through a management buyout in 1996, and was bought by Random House in 2002. Under Christopher MacLehose it issued the numbered Leopard series from 1998 to 2005.
Under the combined name the imprint published the London edition of Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens. In April 2025 The Bookseller reported that it would rebrand as Harvill, a fiction imprint commissioning across more genres, including romance, fantasy and science fiction.
We have not yet written the guide to Harvill Secker's first-edition conventions. Until we do, check each book's own page: we list its points where we know them. Know how Harvill Secker marked its firsts? Tell us.
Authors
Published by Harvill Secker
Spot the edition: Dust jacket, front flap: Printed price on the front flap: £16.99 (first issue jacket)
Frequently asked questions
How many Harvill Secker books does MyVolumes track?
We track 38 editions published by Harvill Secker, 12 of them first editions, across 38 books.
Where these facts come from
- Harvill Secker, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- Secker & Warburg, South Asians in Britain (Making Britain database) (southasianbritain.org)
- Harvill Secker rebrands to focus on fiction as Liz Foley steps up, The Bookseller, 2025 (thebookseller.com)
- Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
Every fact on this page was checked against the sources listed. Checked 19 October 2026. Reviewed by Harriet Ellis; read how we check facts.