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The New English Library (NEL) was a British book publishing company which became an imprint of Hodder Headline.

History

New English Library (NEL) was created[where?] in 1961 by the Times Mirror Company of Los Angeles, with the takeover of two small British paperback companies, Ace Books Ltd and Four Square Books Ltd, as a complement to its 1960 acquisition of New American Library in the United States.[1] NEL’s top bestseller of the 1960s was the novel The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins.[2]

The imprint was sold in 1981 to Hodder & Stoughton,[3] and became part of the merged Hodder Headline in 1993.

It has published genre fiction including westerns, science fiction, fantasy, historical novels, war fiction, romantic novels, mystery, crime and suspense.[4] In addition to the works of Robbins, they have published the works of Stephen King, James Herbert and science-fiction authors have included Brian Aldiss, Frank Herbert, Robert A. Heinlein, Michael Moorcock and Christopher Priest.

New English Library titles were particularly popular in the early 1970s, when hack writers were hired to work under names including Richard Allen and Mick Norman to churn out tales of Hells Angels and skinheads. These older New English Library books have some cult following, especially in the U.K.[5]

The brand continued as a mass-market imprint for Hodder Headline, focussing on thrillers and horror, until 2004 when it was dropped following Hodder’s assimilation into the Hachette Livre group, and a single Hodder & Stoughton paperback list was created, combining the NEL titles then in print with those in Hodder’s previous Coronet (mainstream) and Flame (young and contemporary) paperback lines.[6]

Book series

[ISBN missing]

  • Burke’s Series
  • The Carter Brown Mystery Series
  • Dictionary of Battles series
  • The Edge Series
  • Four Square Adventures
  • Four Square Gothic Mystery
  • Four Square Library[7]
  • Four Square Classics[8]
  • Four Square Science Fiction[9]
  • The Great Histories
  • History of Aviation Series
  • The Island Guidebook Series
  • NEL Mentor
  • NEL Modern Classics
  • NEL Paperbacks
  • NEL SF Master Series[10]
  • New English Library Classic Novel Series
  • New English Library Military History Series
  • The Olympia Press Traveller’s Companion Series
  • Projekt Saucer Series
  • Trains and Railways Special Publications

See also

References

  1. ^ Bonn, Thomas L. (1992). “Uneasy Lie the Heads: New American Library in Transition” in Fred Kobrak, Beth Luey (eds.). The Structure of International Publishing in the 1990s. Transaction Publishers.
  2. ^ Wilson, Andrew (2007). Harold Robbins: The Man Who Invented Sex. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 153.
  3. ^ Ion Trewin, Philip Attenborough obituary. The Independent. 7 April 2006.
  4. ^ “WriteWords: New English Library”. Retrieved 24 May 2006.
  5. ^ Dobbs, Gary. “Great Paperback Publishers: New English Library”. tainted-archive.blogspot.com.au. Retrieved 24 October 2016.
  6. ^ Clee, Nicholas (25 September 2004). “The Bookseller”. The Guardian.
  7. ^ Four Square Books (Four Square Books; New English Library) – Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
  8. ^ Four Square Classics (New English Library Ltd.) – Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
  9. ^ Old Pan/NEL books – complete list of titles, sffchronicles.com. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
  10. ^ “Publication Series: NEL SF Master Series”. Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Retrieved 4 April 2023.

Further reading

  • Justin Marriott (ed.) (November 2010), A Visual Guide to New English Library: Volume One. A5, 88 pp.