Career
In 1898, Duckworth founded the publishing company which bears his name, Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd, in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. In his first year, 1898-1899, he published Henry James's In the Cage; Leslie Stephen's English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century; Jocelyn by John Sinjohn, a nom-de-plume of John Galsworthy; a translation of August Strindberg's Der Vater; and Mother Goose in Prose, the first children's book by L. Frank Baum and the first book illustrated by Maxfield Parrish (Baum's most famous work The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in Chicago just a year later).
Edward Garnett (whose son David would marry Duckworth's niece Angelica Bell) was Duckworth's reader for nearly twenty years. The firm published W. H. Hudson, Charles M. Doughty, D. H. Lawrence, Evelyn Waugh, Virginia Woolf, and most of the work of Edith Sitwell, Osbert Sitwell, and Sacheverell Sitwell. It published all of John Galsworthy's plays between 1909 and 1929.
In 1929, Galsworthy was shocked that Duckworth required him to sign all 1,250 copies of a limited edition of his collected plays. But when told he would get a royalty of 15s. 9d. per copy, he set up his watch and said: "Let's see how long it takes me to earn £984 7s. 6d."
Anthony Powell became Duckworth's literary editor in 1926, and the publishers Judkins & Judkins in his novel What's become of Waring? (1939) are modelled on Duckworth's.
Duckworth died in Milan, Italy, in 1937, but the firm continued to thrive. It marked its centenary in 1998, but ran into financial troubles in 2003. It was then bought out by Peter Mayer, though it continues to publish under the name of Duckworth.
Three portraits of Duckworth are held by the National Portrait Gallery.
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