Publisher · founded 1948 · London
Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Weidenfeld & Nicolson was founded in London in 1949 and is now part of Orion within Hachette. A first shows a "First published in" year or no statement, with no reprint lines listed.
- Editions tracked
- 165
- First editions
- 65
- Books
- 164
- Years
- 1952 to 2020
Weidenfeld & Nicolson is a publisher based in London, founded in 1948. We track 165 editions it published between 1952 and 2020, 65 of them first editions across 164 books. How Weidenfeld & Nicolson marked its first editions is set out below, with a checker for the year on your title page.
About Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Weidenfeld & Nicolson is a London publishing house founded in 1949 by George Weidenfeld, who was born in Vienna, and the writer Nigel Nicolson, and it is now a division of the Orion Publishing Group within Hachette.
The firm's first major success was Isaiah Berlin's The Hedgehog and the Fox (1953). Its early list combined history and ideas, including work by Hugh Trevor-Roper, with literary fiction by Mary McCarthy and Saul Bellow. In 1959 it published the first British edition of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, and Weidenfeld became a long-standing friend of Nabokov. Nicolson's own Portrait of a Marriage appeared under the imprint in 1973. The house also became known for memoirs by political leaders, among them Lyndon B. Johnson, Golda Meir and Charles de Gaulle.
The firm bought Arthur Baker Ltd in 1959 and ran it as an imprint into the 1990s. In 1991 Weidenfeld & Nicolson became part of the newly formed Orion group, which Hachette acquired in 1998; in 2002 Orion's Cassell imprints were folded into a combined Weidenfeld & Nicolson division. George Weidenfeld died in London in January 2016, aged 96.
Holding a copy? The first edition checker shows Weidenfeld & Nicolson's practice for the year on your title page.
Identification
How to identify Weidenfeld & Nicolson first editions
Authors
Books
Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Frequently asked questions
How do I identify a Weidenfeld & Nicolson first edition?
How many Weidenfeld & Nicolson books does MyVolumes track?
We track 165 editions published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 65 of them first editions, across 164 books.
Where these facts come from
- Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- George Weidenfeld, 96; publisher led efforts to bridge faiths, The Boston Globe, 2016 (bostonglobe.com)
- First-Edition: Identification by Publisher (Allen and Patricia Ahearn), ILAB, 2010 (ilab.org)
- First Edition Information by Publisher, Evening Land Books (eveninglandbooks.com)
Every fact on this page was checked against the sources listed. Checked 21 October 2026. Reviewed by Harriet Ellis; read how we check facts.