Robert Hale

About Robert Hale

Robert Hale Limited was a London publisher founded in 1936 by Robert Hale, known for its large output of genre fiction, including Jean Plaidy's historical novels and the Black Horse Westerns, until it closed in 2015.

Hale, born in Norwich in 1887, had worked at John Long, Hutchinson and Jarrolds before leaving Hutchinson in 1935 to start his own firm. Early addresses included 102 Great Russell Street and 63 Old Brompton Road; the firm moved to Clerkenwell Green in the mid-1970s. Its early list included Wyndham Lewis, and it published all of Jean Plaidy's novels as well as Harold Robbins's first four UK hardbacks and works by James Hadley Chase and John D. MacDonald. It also published Robert Goddard's first novel, Past Caring (1986), and topographical series such as the County Books and Portrait of guides.

After Robert Hale died in 1956 his son John took over in his twenties and ran the firm for more than fifty years, widening the genre list and buying the equestrian publisher J. A. Allen and NAG Press. Its Black Horse Westerns were sold largely to public libraries.

Robert Hale ceased trading on 1 December 2015 and its lists and imprints passed to The Crowood Press.

How to spot a Robert Hale first edition

• Before 1958 a Robert Hale first edition either carries no statement or a line on the back of the title page giving the year of first publication; any reprints are added to that record, so a single date with no reprint lines indicates a first printing.