Hamish Hamilton Limited originally specialised in fiction, and was responsible for publishing a number of American authors in the United Kingdom, including Nigel Balchin (including pseudonym: Mark Spade), Raymond Chandler, James Thurber, J. D. Salinger, E. B.

During the late 1940s Hamish Hamilton Limited published authors including D. W. Brogan, Albert Camus, L. P. Hartley, Nancy Mitford, Alan Moorehead, Terence Rattigan, Jean-Paul Sartre, Georges Simenon and A. J. P. Taylor.

Jamie Hamilton sold the firm to the Thomson Organisation in 1965, who resold it to Penguin Books in 1986.

Hamish Hamilton’s aim remains to publish innovative literary fiction and non-fiction from around the world.

Authors include: Alain de Botton, Bernardine Evaristo, Esther Freud, Toby Litt, Redmond O'Hanlon, W. G. Sebald, Zadie Smith, William Sutcliffe, R. K. Narayan, Paul Theroux and John Updike.