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1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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the name of a family of English publishers. The founders of the firm were two Scotsmen, Daniel Macmillan (1813-1857) and his younger brother Alexander (1818-1896). Daniel was a native of the Isle of Arran, and Alexander was born in Irvine on the 3rd of October 1818. Daniel was for some time assistant to the bookseller Johnson at Cambridge, but entered the employ of Messrs Seeley in London in 1837; in 1843 he began business in Aldersgate Street, and in the same year the two brothers purchased the business of Newby in Cambridge. They did not confine themselves to bookselling, but published educational works as early as 1844. In 1845 they became the proprietors of the more important business of Stevenson, in Cambridge, the firm being styled Macmillan, Barclay & Macmillan. In 1850 Barclay retired and the firm resumed the name of Macmillan & Co. Daniel Macmillan died at Cambridge on the 27th of June 18J7. In that year an impetus was given to the business by the publication of Kingsley's Two Years Ago. A branch office was opened in 1858 in Henrietta Street, London, which led to a great extension of trade. These premises were surrendered for larger ones in Bedford Street, and in 1897 the buildings in St Martin's Street were opened. Alexander Macmillan died in January 1896. By his great energy and literary associations, and with the aid of his partners, there had been built up in little over half a century one of the most important publishing houses in the world. Besides the issue of many important series of educational and scientific works, they published the works of Kingsley, Huxley, Maurice, Tennyson, Lightfoot, Westcott, J. R. Green, Lord Roberts,Lewis Carroll, and of many other well-known authors.. In 1898 they took over the old-established publishing house of R. Bentley & Son, and with it the works of Mrs Henry Wood, Miss Rhoda Broughton, The Ingoldsby Legends, and also Temple Bar and the Argosy. In 1893 the firm was converted into a 'limited liability company, its chairman being Frederick Macmillan (b. 1851), who was knighted in 1909. The American firm of the Macmillan Company, of which he was also a director, is a separate business.

See Thomas Hughes, Memoir of Daniel Macmillan (1882) ; A Bibliographical Catalogue of Macmillan & Co's Publications from 1843 to 1889 (1891), with portraits of the brothers Daniel and Alexander after Lowes Dickinson and Hubert Herkomer; also articles in Le Livre (September 1886), Publishers' Circular (January 14, 1893), the Bookman (May 1901), &c.