Penguin Classics editor signs publishing deal for Clew

Penguin Press is to publish the first solo book from Henry Eliot, the editor-at-large of Penguin Classics and co-author of Curiocity (Particular Books) which was published earlier this month.

Cecilia Stein at Penguin Press/Particular Books bought world rights to Eliot's Clew from Patrick Walsh at PEW Literary.

Clew examines the psychological and physical challenges of mazes, examining why they so preoccupy us, woven around the story of Eliot’s own successful quest to find the missing guru and genius of the Maze-making world.

According to Greek mythology, a clew is a ball of thread used by Theseus to find his way out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth.

Clew will provisionally be published by Particular Books/Penguin Press in the Spring of 2018.

Eliot, who became editor-at-large at Penguin Classics earlier this year, joined Penguin in part because of the relationship which built up with the Penguin Press team during the editing of Curocity: In Pursuit of London, the "quirky", illustrated encyclopaedia of London which he co-authored with Matt Lloyd-Rose, a fellow writer and teacher; and which they had sold at auction two years earlier to Stein and Helen Conford.

Having become friends at Cambridge University, Lloyd-Rose and Eliot founded a small map-making company, the eponymous Curiocity, commissioning a series of quirky themed London maps which quickly became cult collectors’ items and then the genesis for Curiocity: In Pursuit of London.