Peter Owen, born in Germany in 1927, founded his first publishing company in 1948 at the age of 21, in partnership with Neville Armstrong. In 1951, he went on to found Peter Owen Publishers, first running the business from home with a single typewriter.

Despite such humble beginnings, the company was soon thriving, and Owen was able to employ new staff and bringing original and interesting international literature on the British market. In the following decades, Peter Owen Publishers produced books by artists, Nobel Prize winners and renowned writers from all over the world.

In 1964, Keith Cunningham started producing his striking book covers for Peter Owen. Simple yet effective, often printed in two colours due to financial constraints, Cunningham’s designs often incorporated photographs or found imagery. A number of these designs were shown at the 2004 Barbican exhibition ‘Communicate: British Independent Graphic Design since the Sixties’ and were acquired posthumously by the University of Brighton Design Archives.

Peter Owen was awarded the OBE for services to literature in 2014, two years before his death in 2016. Today, his legacy lives on thanks to the continuing efforts of his publishing house, which remains committed to platforming talented, exciting writers.