Marion Boyars Publishers acquired by Equinox Publishing

Marion Boyars Publishers and its food history and cookery imprint Prospect Books have been acquired by Equinox Publishing. 

Marion Boyars was founded in 1975. Boyars’ daughter, Catheryn Kilgarriff, took over when Boyars died in 1999. Kilgarriff, who had been running the company single-handedly, is now retiring.  

She said she was “delighted to have found such a good home for the ground-breaking Marion Boyars titles, the social science list which includes the works of Ivan Illich, and for the prestigious food history imprint, Prospect Books” adding "I am sure that Janet Joyce and her colleagues at Equinox Publishing will enjoy the future as these books find wider audiences".

Equinox was founded in 2003 by Joyce and was originally based in London but moved to Sheffield in 2013. It is an academic press publishing books and journals in archaeology, linguistics, religious studies and popular music with a small food history list of its own. Bestsellers with general interest include the recent memoir by jazz pianist Brad Mehldau, Formation: Building a Personal Canon and a biography, Ivor Cutler: A Life Outside the Sitting Room, by Bruce Lindsay.  

Joyce said: "Years ago, Equinox tried and failed to acquire Prospect Books when Tom Jaine was thinking about selling, so when an agent approached us with the news that Catheryn wanted to retire we naturally pursued the opportunity to add to our existing (small) food history book list. Also since we already publish journals we felt we could do something more with their journal, Petits Propos Culinaires (PPC) which we feel has been underexposed in the academic market.  Also, we are confident we can do credit to the legacy Boyars list which, as Catheryn says, includes quite a few gems with steady annual sales.

"As Catheryn did an heroic job managing her company on a solo basis from home, there are no Boyars staff affected by the sale.  We will consolidate all the Boyars/Prospect books records in our Sheffield headquarters and will not be making any immediate changes in sales representation or distribution."

The Boyars/Prospect list will remain with Central Books for UK distribution and representation to the trade conducted by Signature Books while North American distribution and representation remains with Consortium.

For further information, contact Val Hall of Equinox Publishing, at vhall@equinoxpub.com.