History: 1969-1987
Pluto Press was set up was set up in London by Richard Kuper in 1969 to support and promote political debate and activism. Its left-wing agenda stemmed from its early association with the International Socialists, which broadened to a wider revolutionary left in 1972 when Nina and Michael Kidron joined. Anne Benewick and Ric Sissons joined soon after, and the team eventually reached 16. Publishing extensively in the areas of movement history, race politics, Ireland, feminism and sexual politic, early successes included Sheila Rowbotham’s Hidden from History: 300 years of women’s oppression and the fight against it and Patrick Kinnersley’s Hazards of Work.
Series published during this period include: the Workers’ Handbooks; the Marxism Series: Ideas in Action; Militarism, State and Society series; Pluto Plays; Arguments for Socialism; Pluto Crime; Liberation Classics in the 1980s; and the Big Red Diaries. The most successful was the State of the World Atlas series by Michael Kidron & Ronald Segal – visual encapsulations of major social and political trends – which were created and produced by Pluto Press and published by Pan Books.
The target readership was reached by selling directly to trades unions, women's organizations and networks, student unions, and theatre audiences as well as through the network of radical bookshops that emerged in the 1970s. Pluto Press became a distributor and co-publisher of titles generated by Urizen Books and South End Press in the USA, and Ink Links in the UK, as well as distributor for Counter-Information Services, History Workshop, Feminist Review and others. A trade sales organization, Volume Sales, was set up in partnership with Allison & Busby, under the direction of Ric Sissons. New departures in publishing included working with Max Stafford-Clark and the Royal Court Theatre to encourage theatre-goers to read play scripts by printing programmes which included the entire play. In 1987 Pluto Press was bought by Roger van Zwanenberg.
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