Faber & Faber was established in 1929 by Geoffrey Faber. Faber had previously co-founded Faber and Gwyer with Sir Maurice and Lady Gwyer, owners of The Scientific Press, in 1924. Faber and the Gwyers dissolved Faber and Gwyer in 1929, and Faber continued as a trade publisher with his new company Faber & Faber.

Faber was joined by T S Eliot as a literary adviser in 1929. As well as Faber and Eliot, the company board included Richard de la Mare, Charles Stewart and Frank Morley. This team created a strong, profitable catalogue, much of which is still in print.

The catalogue covered biography, memoir, fiction, politics, religion, art, architecture, children’s books and books on ecology from the beginning. Authors published by Faber & Faber from 1929 included Jean Cocteau, Herbert Read, Max Eastman, George Rylands, John Dover Wilson, Geoffrey Keynes, Forrest Reid and Vita Sackville-West.

Poetry was a main output of the publisher. As well as Eliot, whose collected poems 1909-1925 Faber published in 1929, the company’s list of poets included Ezra Pound, W H Auden, Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice, Marianne Moore, Wyndham Lewis, John Gould Fletcher, Roy Campbell, James Joyce and Walter de la Mare.

In the second half of the 20th century, Faber & Faber published a new generation of writers, including William Golding, Lawrence Durrell, Robert Lowell, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, W S Graham, Philip Larkin, P D James, Tom Stoppard and John Osborne.

In the 21st century, Faber & Faber has taken on new ventures including the print-on-demand Faber Finds imprint, Faber Digital, and the creative writing school Faber Academy, ensuring its survival as one of the oldest independent publishing houses in the UK.