Hogarth Press was founded in 1917 by Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf at their home, Hogarth House, Richmond, Surrey, mainly as a hobby.
Their policy was to publish new and experimental work. Their earliest publications included Katherine Mansfield’s Prelude (1918), Virginia Woolf’s Kew Gardens (1919), and T. S. Eliot’s Poems (1919). They also published translations of Maxim Gorky, Anton Chekhov, Lev Tolstoy, Fedor Dostoevsky, Ivan Bunin, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Italo Svevo. In addition, they were the first to introduce the work of Robinson Jeffers, J. C. Ransom, and E. A. Robinson into England.
Until 1923 they operated on a subscription basis. In 1924 they moved to Tavistock Square, where John Lehmann became assistant (1931–2), and then part-owner (1938–46). Between 1917 and 1946 the Press published 525 titles, including pamphlets on psychoanalysis, politics, aesthetics, economics, and disarmament. In 1947 Lehmann’s share in the Press was bought by Chatto and Windus. Since 1987, the Hogarth Press has been an imprint of Random House.