S. French

About S. French

Samuel French is a theatrical publisher and play-licensing business, rooted in the London play list of Thomas Hailes Lacy and the New York firm Samuel French began in 1854, and owned since December 2018 by Concord as part of Concord Theatricals.

Lacy, an actor-manager, set up as a play publisher in Covent Garden in the 1840s and grew the business by buying the plates of earlier play publishers. By 1873 Lacy's Acting Edition of Plays ran to 99 volumes holding 1,485 pieces. Samuel French (1821 to 1898) and Lacy acted as each other's agents across the Atlantic; French moved to London in 1872, and when Lacy retired in 1873 French bought him out for 5,000 pounds, leaving his son Thomas Henry French in charge in New York.

By French's death in 1898 the firm represented most of the well-known English playwrights of recent decades. Wentworth Hogg, French's London manager, bought the London business in 1902 and his family ran it until 1975, when the British and American firms were brought together under Abbott Van Nostrand. Samuel French Ltd's London bookshop on Fitzroy Street closed in 2017.

In December 2018 Concord Music acquired Samuel French and combined it with Rodgers & Hammerstein Theatricals and Tams-Witmark to form Concord Theatricals as one of its theatrical licensing libraries.