Ward, Lock

About Ward, Lock

Ward, Lock & Co. was a London publisher founded in 1854 by Ebenezer Ward and George Lock, remembered by collectors as the firm that first printed Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887, the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes.

The partners started on Fleet Street and moved to Salisbury Square by 1878. In 1866 they bought the rights to Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management from Samuel Orchart Beeton, and the firm also issued editions of classics such as Robinson Crusoe and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It opened offices in New York in 1882 and Melbourne in 1884. James Bowden became a partner in 1891, the business became a limited company in 1893, and after his departure it traded as Ward, Lock & Co., Ltd.

Ward Lock issued A Study in Scarlet in book form in July 1888 with illustrations by Conan Doyle's father, Charles Altamont Doyle. It launched The Windsor Magazine in 1895 and its Red Guides, shilling travel guides to the British Isles, in 1896. In September 1928 it published Leslie Charteris's Meet the Tiger, the first novel about Simon Templar, the Saint.

The firm split into educational and general companies in 1964. Cassell bought Ward Lock Limited in 1989, and the list passed with Cassell into the Orion Publishing Group.

How to spot a Ward, Lock first edition

• In 1928 Ward, Lock told H. S. Boutell that it had no fixed method of designating its first editions, so earlier Ward Lock books often need checking against an author bibliography.