Arnold was founded in January 1890 by Edward Augustus Arnold (1857–1942) at 37 Bedford Street, Covent Garden, and soon after moved to Maddox Street in the West End of London. Edward was the nephew of the poet and critic Matthew Arnold and the grandson of Thomas Arnold, the reforming headmaster of Rugby School — a line of descent that placed the firm squarely within the British tradition of scholarly and educational publishing from its very first day.
From those early years Arnold specialised in materials for schools and universities, with companion lists in medicine, the sciences, exploration and mountaineering, and a small but distinguished literary list. The firm briefly operated a New York office in the 1890s and has published from London ever since.
The medical list
Arnold's reputation in medicine was built on textbooks and monographs aimed at students, nurses, and practising clinicians. The list is anchored by Muir's Textbook of Pathology, first published in 1924 by Sir Robert Muir and now in its fourteenth edition; it has been continuously revised for more than seventy-five years and remains a standard reference in pathology teaching. Around it sit long-running titles such as Medicine for Nurses by W. Gordon Sears, Anatomy and Physiology for Nurses, Materia Medica for Nurses, Clinical Chemical Pathology by C. H. Gray, Occupational Health Practice, and Thomas McKeown's widely cited The Modern Rise of Population(1976). The Arnold approach to medical publishing has always been practical, evidence-led, and written for classroom and clinic alike.
Literary publishing
Although the core of the list is academic and professional, Arnold has always carried a small literary strand. Most notably, the firm was the original publisher of the major works of E. M. Forster, including Aspects of the Novel (1927), which Arnold continues to keep in print.
Exploration & mountaineering
Arnold built one of the finest British lists on mountaineering and exploration in the first half of the twentieth century — first-person accounts, expedition journals, and technical monographs that remain reference works for climbers, alpinists and historians of the discipline today.
Recent history
In 1987 Arnold was acquired by Hodder & Stoughton, joining what is now the Hodder Headline group. The imprint continues to operate as a dedicated academic and professional list within the group, with editorial offices in London.
A detailed history of the firm's first hundred years is given in Edward Arnold: 100 Years of Publishing by Bryan Bennett and Anthony Hamilton (Edward Arnold, 1990), available from the publisher and in academic libraries.