In the editorial of its inaugural edition, this short-lived periodical states its aim ‘to provide a forum for the discussion of the problems facing this new Asia and those who seek to work in harmony with the countries of the East’. Triggered by the newly independent status of Asian nations, it sought to give a voice to their peoples in order to enable western readers to gain better access to this region of the world. Asian Horizon published short fiction and poetry, essays on different areas and aspects of the continent, and book reviews. Examples include a short story titled ‘The Liar’ by Mulk Raj Anand, a poem by the London-based Aga Bashir, and essays on contemporary Pakistani fiction and an exhibition of Asian artists held in London in 1950. Produced and published in London, it included work by several contributors based in the Indian subcontinent and other parts of Asia, as well as in Britain.

Founded and edited by Cyril Connolly, with financial backing from Peter Watson (who was also its art editor), Horizon was a London-based magazine which published short fiction, essays on literature and art, and book reviews by an impressive range of contributors including W. H. Auden, George Orwell, E. M. Forster and Stephen Spender, who was also the magazine’s uncredited associate editor in its early years. Several of its contributors had connections with South Asian writers in Britain in the 1940s, and the magazine displays an awareness of the work of Indian writers in the form of numerous advertisements for their published fiction as well as for periodicals featuring their work. In spite of this, however, Horizon itself gave surprisingly little space to articles by these writers or about their work. An article on ‘Kalighat Folk Painters’ by Ajit Mookerjee, and an essay on the artist Jamini Roy by E. Mary Milford, are two of the rare exceptions to this tendency to confine itself to Euro-American literature and art.

The London Mercury was a monthly magazine published by Field Press Ltd.  It was published first in 1919, one year after the end of the First World War. It sought to fill a gap in the market of literary magazines. According to its founding editor it was unique among other literary journals as it combined the publication of creative writing, reviews of the contemporary literary output, publishing poetry, prose writing and full-length literary essays, and critical surveys of books. Its mission was to foster the teaching of English and the appreciation of the arts.

Especially after Rolfe Arnold Scott-James took over as editor in 1934, the magazine increasingly featured short stories and poetry by Indian writers. It also included survey articles and reviews by Indian writers on topics such as Indian art and Indian literature. Reviews of books on India were also increasingly published by the journal. The journal absorbed The Bookman in 1934. In the  late 1930s, the magazine ran into financial difficulties. The last issue was published in April 1939, after which the journal was absorbed into Life and Letters Today.

The Bookman was a monthly magazine published by Hodder & Staughton. First published in 1891, The Bookman was initially conceived as an advertising tool for Hodder and Stoughton’s catalogue. The journal also published essays and reviews. The journal was quick to respond to new technological innovations, including columns on film, photography and a new supplement called 'The Illustrated Bookman', which featured articles on travel writing and accompanying photographs that from today's perspective could be read as 'orientalist'. These photographs exoticized the locale, highlighting the places' strangeness, otherness and their attraction as a space for adventure and exploration.

Under the editorship of Hugh Ross-Williamson in the 1930s, the journal increasingly reviewed books on India and Indian political issues. Aubrey Menen became the drama critic for The Bookman from October 1933 to May 1934. His columns engaged with the state of London's commercial theatre and argued for an alternative theatre that was poltically engaging and addressed a wider constituency. He also intervened into debates around the creation of a national theatre. He called for a more realist style of acting and lamented the influence of film that in his opinion had lead to a dumbing down of theatre. The journal published a number of survey articles on Indian writing, and regularly reviewed books on Indian politics. The journal was incorporated into the London Mercury in 1935, which was absorbed into Life & Letters today in 1939.

M. J. Tambimuttu and Anthony Dickins launched this literary magazine in 1939, with the former as literary editor and the latter as general editor, but it was Tambimuttu who was the driving force behind it. Well regarded in the literary world, it featured the work of many of the most influential British poets of the period, including Lawrence Durrell, W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice and Stephen Spender, as well as reviews of poetry, fictions, plays, literary magazines and scholarly work, and some short prose, critical essays and illustrations. It also published work by new poets, declaring in its first editorial that 'every man has poetry within him'. Indeed, T. S. Eliot said of the magazine: 'It is only in Poetry London that I can consistently expect to find new poets who matter'. Initially funded by subscriptions and donations, and frequently suffering from paper shortages during the Second World War, the magazine was beset by financial difficulties and appeared irregularly. From 1942 to 1947, it gained the backing of publishers Nicholson & Watson, who also asked Tambimuttu to develop his own imprint of books, Editions Poetry London. As well as writers, Editions Poetry London promoted several artists, publishing work by Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, among others. After Nicholson & Watson withdrew their support in 1947, the magazine gained the financial backing of Richard March until its demise in 1951.

Correspondence between Tambimuttu and his contributors (MSS Add 88907-8, British Library, St Pancras) highlights the central position occupied by Poetry London and its editor Tambimuttu within the literary and artistic networks of 1940s London. Letters to the editor suggest that several well known cultural figures felt much personal affection for Tambimuttu and that the magazine was held in high regard by the literary establishment, as well as triggering debate and controversy. There is some rather limited evidence of connections between Tambimuttu and other Indian writers, resident in both India and Britain (for example, Ahmed Ali and Cedric Dover) – although the work of Indian poets and writers rarely appears in the magazine. The correspondence also gives insight into the impact of war on literary culture.

Life & Letters Today was a monthly literary review magazine which published short fiction, essays on cultural issues, and book reviews. Several well known British literary figures, including D. H. Lawrence, Dylan Thomas and Julian Symons, contributed to the magazine. Mulk Raj Anand was a regular contributor of both fiction and reviews, and the work of several other South Asian writers based in Britain was also occasionally featured. There were three issues dedicated to Indian writing and featuring a range of short fiction and essays by writers such as Narayana Menon, S. Menon Marath, Iqbal Singh and the Ceylonese J. Vijaya-Tunga, as well as reviews of their work.

The Left Book Club was established in the context of the rise of fascism in Europe and the economic depression, when the need for the dissemination of left-wing politics was keenly felt among British intellectuals. It was an immediate success on its establishment, with 6,000 subscriptions after a month and a membership of 40,000 by the end of its first year. With links to the Communist Party of Great Britain, the LBC was explicit in its advocacy of a left-wing politics. It published books on a wide range of subjects, ‘from farming to Freud to air-raid shelters to Indian independence’ (Laity, p. ix), aiming for accessibility and education. The titles, many of which were newly commissioned, were sold to LBC members at discounted prices. Despite its attempts to bring politics and literature to working-class people, its activists were largely privileged men and women. The LBC organized summer schools and trips (including to the Soviet Union) and held lectures and rallies focused on political events such as the Spanish Civil War, with members also hosting local meetings to discuss the books.

Clearly espousing an anti-imperial stance, the LBC published books by Rajani Palme Dutt and Ayana Angadi, as well as by Santha Rama Rau and Bhabani Bhattacharya. In late 1936, authorities in India began to intercept Left Book Club books despatched (via the Phoenix Book Company) to members in India on the grounds that they contained ‘extremist propaganda’, and the India Office requested reports on the LBC’s activities. Evidence suggests that there were LBC Indian student discussion groups (such as the one formed by Promode Ranjan Sen Gupta, who was under government surveillance), and later an Indian Branch of the LBC, and that these groups attempted to subvert the censorship of LBC material in India. Further, in late 1937, there is evidence that Victor Gollancz, supported by Nehru, was attempting to start a Left Book Club in India in order to circumvent the ban (L/PJ/12/504, pp. 8, 10–11, 18–19). 

The publishing house Michael Joseph Ltd was founded by Michael Joseph on 5 September 1935. It was initially set up as a subsidiary of Victor Gollancz, which invested £4,001 4s. 0d. Gollancz and Norman Collins acted as directors with Joseph as managing director. Both publishing houses could save money by sharing premises, packers and accountants. Michael Joseph founded his house at a volatile economic time when many other publishing houses were folding or suffering serious financial difficulties.

Gollancz and Joseph clashed on the direction of the publishing house. Joseph found it difficult to meet Gollancz’s over-ambitious financial targets. Furthermore they did not agree on the type of material the house should publish. In the end, after Gollancz tried to censor Sir Philip Gibbs's Across the Frontiers for political reasons, he bought out Gollancz in 1938.

Joseph managed to build up an impressive list of authors, such as H. E. Bates, C. S. Forester, Monica Dickens, and Richard Llewellyn. He also published a book by Bertrand Russell and D. F. Karaka’s autobiographical book about his time in England, I Go West (1938). Other authors on Joseph’s list included Paul Gallico, Richard Gordon, Vicki Baum, Joyce Cary, and Vita Sackville-West. His publishing house was bought out by Penguin and is now an imprint on its list.

Secker & Warburg is a publishing company formed in 1936 by the merger of Martin Secker's publishing firm with Frederic Warburg's. The company took an anti-facist and anti-Soviet stance and published among other writers George Orwell (after his departure from Victora Gollancz), Cedric Dover, D. H. Lawrence, C. L. R. James, Frank Moraes, and Ram Gopal. In 1951 the company became an imprint of Heinemann, later merged with Harvill and, as Harvill Secker, is now part of the Random House group.

The Bodley Head is a publishing firm founded by Charles Elkin Mathews and John Lane. It originally started as an antiquarian bookshop. It was named after Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and the firm used the head of Bodley as its insignia. In the early 1890s, the Bodley Head embodied the spirit and aestheticism of the period by specializing in stylishly decorated limited editions of belle-lettres, and by publishing representative works of the English fin-de-siécle, such as Oscar Wilde’s plays and Aubrey Beardsley’s controversial periodical The Yellow Book. It took on many young poets, notably those of ‘The Rhymers’ Club’, a group of London-based poets which included W. B. Yeats, Arthur Symons and Ernest Rhys. After the partnership between Mathews and Lane ended in September 1894, Lane, who retained the firm’s insignia, continued to expand the Bodley Head. Lane died in 1925, and his nephew, Allen Lane, took over the business.

From 1932 to 1935, V. K. Krishna Menon was an editor at the Bodley Head. He launched a series called the Twentieth Century Library, which included Art by Eric Gill, Democracy by J. A. Hobson, Design by Noel Carrington, The Jews by Norman Bentwich, Broadcasting by Raymond W. Postgate, The Home by Naomi Mitchison, Property by H. L. Beales, The Black Races by J. H. Drieberg, The Theatre by Theodore Komisarjevsky, The Town by David Glass, Money by M. A. Abrahams, Communism by Ralph Fox and Women by Winifred Holtby. Menon was Jawaharlal Nehru’s literary agent in London, and the Bodley Head published Nehru’s Autobiography in 1936. In 1936, Bodley Head went into liquidation, and the following year it was bought by a consortium of the publishers George Allen & Unwin Ltd, Jonathan Cape, and J. M. Dent. Lane left the Bodley Head in 1936 to set up Penguin Books, and appointed Menon as the editor of Pelican in 1937.

In 1957 the firm was bought by Max Reinhardt, who successfully expanded the business, publishing authors such as George Bernard Shaw, Charles Chaplin, G. V. Desani, William Trevor, Maurice Sendak, Muriel Spark, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Sam Haskins and Alistair Cooke. Graham Greene, one of the firm’s authors, became its director. In the 1970s, the Bodley Head joined Jonathan Cape and Chatto & Windus. In 1987, it was sold to Random House, which continues to publish children’s books under the Bodley Head imprint. It was relaunched by Random House as a non-fiction imprint in April 2008.