Heinemann Educational

About Heinemann Educational

Heinemann Educational Books (HEB) was the educational publishing arm of the London house William Heinemann, best known for creating the African Writers Series in 1962. The educational unit became an independent company in 1961. Alan Hill (1912 to 1993) is credited as the founding architect of HEB and also served as managing director of the wider Heinemann Group.

The African Writers Series opened with a paperback reissue of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, followed by Cyprian Ekwensi's Burning Grass and Kenneth Kaunda's Zambia Shall Be Free. Achebe served as editorial adviser from 1962 until 1972, when Girls at War became number 100; James Currey joined in 1967 and later ran the list. The books were numbered paperbacks (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's A Grain of Wheat, for example, is No. 36), and by the mid 1980s the series had reached some 270 titles.

Ownership changed repeatedly: Octopus bought Heinemann in 1985, Reed International bought Octopus in 1987, and Reed Elsevier sold the educational business in 2001, when it became part of Harcourt Education. In 2007 Pearson acquired the UK, South African, Australian and New Zealand arms, while Houghton Mifflin took the American operation. Heinemann stopped adding new African Writers Series titles in 2003, and Pearson relaunched the series in 2011.