Founded | 1889 |
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Founder | Algernon Methuen |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Publication types | books |
Official website | www.methuen.co.uk |
Methuen Publishing Ltd is a British publishing house. It was founded in 1889 by Sir Algernon Methuen (1856–1924) and began publishing in London in 1892. E. V. Lucas headed the firm from 1924 to 1928.
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In June 1889, as a sideline to teaching, Algernon Methuen began to publish and market his own textbooks under the label Methuen & Co.
The company’s first success at publishing came in 1892 with the publication of Rudyard Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads. The firm soon experienced rapid growth by publishing works by Marie Corelli, Hilaire Belloc, Robert Lewis Stevenson, and Oscar Wilde (De Profundis, 1905)[1] as well as Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes.[2]
In 1910 the business was converted into a limited liability company with E. V. Lucas and G.E. Webster joining the founder on the board of directors.[3]
The company published the 1920 English translation of Albert Einstein’s “Relativity, the Special and the General Theory: A Popular Exposition”.
Building on the knowledge he had gained with children’s literature at the publisher Grant Richards, E.V. Lucas ensured the company sustained its early success by developing its list of children’s books. Among the authors Lucas signed to the company were A. A. Milne, Kenneth Grahame, while he also supported illustrators W. Heath Robinson, H.M. Bateman and Ernest Shepard.[4]
By the 1920s it had in addition to the previously mentioned authors a literary list that included Anthony Hope, G.K. Chesterton, Henry James, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Ruth Manning-Sanders and The Arden Shakespeare series.
Following the publication of Lawrence's The Rainbow (1915), the British Director of Public prosecuted Methuen for obscenity. The firm offered no defense and agreed to destroy the remaining stock of 1011 copies.[2] It is thought that one reason for the firm’s failure to support Lawrence was that he had at the time written an unkind portrait of chief editor’s brother, who had recently been killed in France.[4]
In 1924 E. V. Lucas, succeeded Algernon Methuen as chairman and led the company until his death in 1928.[4] Besides his executive role he also received a separate salary as the chief reader of the company. His commercial judgment added authors Enid Blyton, P. G. Wodehouse, Pearl S. Buck and Maurice Maeterlinck to the company’s list.
In 1930 the company published the popular humorous book 1066 and All That.
Methuen was the English publisher of the book editions of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of classic Belgian comic-strip books, written and illustrated by Hergé. Methuen altered their editions of Tintin by insisting that books featuring British characters undergo major changes. The Black Island, first published in French in 1937, was set in Great Britain, but, prior to publishing it themselves in 1966, Methuen decided that it did not reflect the U.K. accurately enough and sent a list of 131 "errors" to be corrected.[5] It was thus redrawn and reset in the 1960s. Critics have attacked Methuen over the changes, claiming that Black Island lost a lot of its charm as a result[5]. Land of Black Gold had had a troubled publishing history, but the completed adventure eventually appeared in 1948–50. It was set in the British Mandate of Palestine and featured the conflict between Jews, Arabs and British troops. When Methuen was translating the Adventures of Tintin into English, Israel had long since been in existence, and Methuen asked for it to be edited. Herge took the opportunity to redraw the few problematic pages, as well as the pages before that: the freighter that appeared before that was based on Herge's imagination, due to lack of resources at the time. The earlier version, published in 1950, was reprinted by Casterman as a facsimile edition, but internationally was completely replaced by the newer version.
Critics have also raised the fact that when Methuen published The Blue Lotus in 1983 it retained the original setting of 1931 during the Japanese occupation of China and the Shanghai International Settlement, which had been abolished in 1943. On the other hand, 1983 was also the year of Hergé's death, and he had specified that there were to be no further official Tintin adventures by other artists or writers or any changes made to the stories published so far. Methuen added an explanatory note of the situation in China at the time. The Tintin books are now published by Egmont Publishing.
In 1958 Methuen was part of the conglomerate Associated Book Publishers (ABP), and for much of the 1970s was known as Eyre Methuen following its absorption of the Eyre & Spottiswoode firm. When ABP was acquired by the Thomson Organization in 1987, it sold off the trade publishing units, including Methuen, to Reed International's Octopus. Reed Elsevier sold off its trade publishing to Random House in 1997, and Methuen bought itself out in 1998.
In 2003, Methuen Publishing purchased the company Politico's Publishing from its owner Iain Dale.[6] In 2006, it sold its notable drama lists to A & C Black for £2.35 million.
The company is currently based in Victoria, London.
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A yūgen gaisha or yūgen kaisha (Jp. 有限会社, lit. "limited company," abbreviated in English as Y.K. or as wasei-eigo Co., Ltd.) is a form of business organization in Japan.
Yūgen gaisha are based on the German GmbH and were implemented in Japan in the Limited Company Act (有限会社法) of 1940. Companies Act, implemented on May 1, 2006, replaced the yūgen gaisha with a new form of company called gōdō gaisha, based upon the American limited liability company. Following the implementation, no new YKs were allowed in Japan, but pre-existing YKs were allowed to continue their operations as kabushiki gaisha under special rules.
Whether the term is pronounced as yūgen gaisha or yūgen kaisha is up to the local dialect or the company's preference when it is part of the company's name. While it is pronounced yūgen gaisha in standard Japanese, the alphabetic abbreviation is always Y.K. by standard.
As of 2005, a Y.K. can have up to 50 investors, called members (社員 shain). The members were required to provide at least ¥3 million in capital contributions, with each investment unit (持分 mochibun) valued at no less than ¥50,000. The minimum capital amount was much more permissive than the ¥10 million minimum for a kabushiki gaisha. A Y.K. was also not required to issue certificates for investment units, whereas stock certificates were required for a K.K.
A private company limited by shares, usually called a private limited company (Ltd.) (though this can theoretically also refer to a private company limited by guarantee), is the private limited type of company incorporated under the laws of England and Wales, Scotland, that of certain Commonwealth countries and the Republic of Ireland. It has shareholders with limited liability and its shares may not be offered to the general public, unlike those of a public limited company (plc).
"Limited by shares" means that the company has shareholders, and that the liability of the shareholders to creditors of the company is limited to the capital originally invested, i.e. the nominal value of the shares and any premium paid in return for the issue of the shares by the company. A shareholder's personal assets are thereby protected in the event of the company's insolvency, but money invested in the company will be lost.
A limited company may be "private" or "public". A private limited company's disclosure requirements are lighter, but for this reason its shares may not be offered to the general public (and therefore cannot be traded on a public stock exchange). This is the major distinguishing feature between a private limited company and a public limited company. Most companies, particularly small companies, are private.
LTD, Ltd, or Ltd. may refer to:
Leukotriene D4 (LTD4) is one of the leukotrienes. Its function main in the body is to induce the contraction of smooth muscle, resulting in bronchoconstriction and vasoconstriction. It also increases vascular permeability. LTD-4 is released by basophils. Other leukotrienes that function in a similar manner are leukotrienes C4 and E4. Pharmacological agents that inhibit the function of these leukotrienes are leukotriene receptor antagonists (e.g. Zafirlukast, montelukast) and are useful for asthmatic individuals.