Blackie and Son

It also published "finely printed 'toy' and 'reward' books"[1] (the latter being "intended for presentation as prizes to pupils in day and Sunday schools").

[1] In 1893 Blackie and Son appointed Talwin Morris as the firm's art director and book designer.

During his tenure, until his death in 1911, Morris was "responsible for the first integrated and visually homogenised approach to the mass production of easily affordable books"[5] for any British publisher.

[7] From 1920, under the guidance of the Cambridge-trained engineer and mathematician, Frederick Bisacre, who became a Blackie and Son partner and subsequently its chairman,[8] the firm began to publish a scientific list "at the cutting edge of research"[9] and which would become the "strongest list in the area"[9] from any British commercial publisher.

[10] From the 1950s onwards it published The Kennett Library, a graded series of classics retold for schools including: Kidnapped, Little Women, Westward Ho!, The Black Arrow, Wuthering Heights and Ben-Hur.