The story
Founded by Andrew Chatto and John Camden Hotten in 1855, in London.1
The firm developed out of the publishing business of John Camden Hotten, founded in 1855. After his death in 1873, it was sold to Hotten's junior partner Andrew Chatto (1841–1913), who took on as a partner the poet William Edward Windus (1827–1910), son of the patron of J. M. W. Turner, Benjamin Godfrey Windus (1790–1867). Chatto & Windus published Mark Twain, W. S. Gilbert, Wilkie Collins, H. G. Wells, Wyndham Lewis, Richard Aldington, Frederick Rolfe (as Fr. Rolfe), Aldous Huxley, Samuel Beckett, the "unfinished" novel Weir of Hermiston (1896) by Robert Louis Stevenson, and the first translation into English of Marcel Proust's novel À la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, 1922), among others.
In 1946, the company took over the running of the Hogarth Press, founded in 1917 by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. It published broadly in the field of literature, including novels and poetry. It is not connected, except in the loosest historical fashion, with Pickering & Chatto Publishers.
Chatto & Windus became a limited company in 1953, and it was active as an independent publishing house until 1969, when it merged with Jonathan Cape. Norah Smallwood was appointed to the board, and later succeeded Ian Parsons as chairman and managing director in 1975, serving until her retirement in 1982.
Chatto, along with Jonathan Cape and Virago Press, were purchased by Penguin Random House in 1987. As of 2019, Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Vintage Publishing UK.
From Wikipedia’s article on Chatto & Windus, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4