# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Heinemann, William

​HEINEMANN, WILLIAM (1863–1920), publisher, was born at Surbiton 18 May 1863, the eldest son of Louis Heinemann (a native of Hanover who became naturalized in 1856, shortly after settling in England) by his wife, Jane Lavino, a native of Manchester. William Heinemann received a cosmopolitan education, partly at a gymnase in Dresden and partly with a tutor in England. As a young man he intended to become a musician, and went to Germany to study music. Always a fastidious critic of himself as well as of others, he realized, although he became an accomplished musician, that he lacked the creative power necessary even for interpretative work of the highest order. His genius was for appreciation: he was as fine a judge of a painting or of a book as of music.
It was in the publication of books that Heinemann's flair for discovering and guiding the talent of others found full expression. He loved books, and cared not only for their content, but for the craft of book-making, in which he became an acknowledged master. He received his training as publisher in the firm of Messrs. Trübner, of Ludgate Hill, afterwards Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trübner, and set up in business for himself in London in 1890. Mr. Sydney Pawling joined him in 1893. The first book published by the firm was The Bondman (1890) by (Sir) Hall Caine, which had a great popular success. Among his earliest publications was J. M. Whistler's Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890). Heinemann, who was a great friend of the painter, later published Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Pennell's Life of Whistler. During the years 1895–1897 he published The New Review under the editorship of William Ernest Henley [q.v.].
Although the scope of Heinemann's firm was wide, it was, perhaps, the brilliance of its fiction list that made it especially remarkable: R. L. Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling were two of the earliest names; Sarah Grand, Flora Annie Steel, Israel Zangwill, Max Beerbohm, John Masefield, John Galsworthy, Joseph Conrad, William Somerset Maugham, and H. G. Wells were also amongst the Heinemann authors. It was once said of Heinemann that he ‘had a nose for merit like that of a dog for truffles’. He published many plays, including most of those by Sir Arthur Pinero, Somerset Maugham, Israel Zangwill, Henry Davies, and Charles Haddon Chambers. Heinemann himself wrote plays, which were published by the firm of John Lane—The First Step (1895), Summer Moths (1898), and War (1901). But, as always in his creative work, he remained the dilettante. He had brilliant ideas but he turned them off lightly and bent his serious energies towards producing beautifully the creations of other minds. Hand in hand with his appreciative and critical faculties went a strong and sound sense of business, and a gift for organization. He played a great part in founding, in 1896, the Publishers' Association of Great Britain and Ireland, and ​was himself president from 1909 to 1911. He was also president of the National Booksellers' Provident Association from 1913 until his death, and was very active on its council.
Heinemann numbered amongst his friends many brilliant men of his day, not only in England, but on the Continent. He spoke and read fluently French, German, Italian, and had a working knowledge of Spanish; and it is largely owing to him that the masterpieces of foreign literature are now available in sound English translations. His firm produced, under (Sir) Edmund Gosse's editorship, the International Library of translations from leading works of European fiction; and Heinemann commissioned Mrs. Constance Garnett's translations of Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Tolstoy, and launched in England the works of Ibsen—translated by William Archer—of Björnson, and of Romain Rolland. His place amongst the publishers of Europe was unique: he was the junction where all the lines met. He was persona grata with his confrères of other lands and, at the same time, he was a spectacular figure in the English publishing world. His meeting with Dr. James Loeb, a graduate of Harvard University and formerly a partner in the New York banking firm, Kuhn, Loeb & Co., was responsible for his most impressive literary enterprise. Dr. Loeb, imbued with a great love for the classics, combined with Heinemann to produce the unique Loeb classical library of translations from well-known and little-known classical authors. When completed the library will contain all that is most valuable in classical antiquity. It already includes many authors hitherto but little studied.
Undoubtedly Heinemann's most notable quality as a publisher was his extraordinary power of recognizing not only what was good but also what the world would consider good a few years after the date of publication. As a man his chief gift was for friendship. He gathered round himself a brilliant circle. Whatever party he gave he was the centre of it, and he brought out all that was best and most interesting in his guests. His great weakness was a certain intellectual arrogance: he had a larger ‘blind spot’ in his mental outlook than most men of his attainments, because he was human enough to be violently prejudiced by his own personal likes and dislikes. But it may be said of Heinemann, as his best epitaph, that the ideal was always more to him than the bank balance: he was a man to whom the dream was more than the business.
Heinemann married in 1899 (but divorced in 1904) Donna Magda Stuart Sindici, a talented young Italian authoress, whose first novel, Via Lucis, he had published. He died suddenly in London 5 October 1920.
[Private information.]
F. T. J.