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Image of Very Heath Robinson title page.

A Nod to Subscription Publishing

In March we launched a Kickstarter campaign for our great big humour title Very Heath Robinson and raised £7,581 towards the costs of the book, which was published on 4th May. We are enormously grateful to all those who answered our call and helped us complete ‘Adam’s whopping (1.9 kg), wonderful new book’, as one reviewer has called it, to the standard we intended. We have pleasure in listing them below.

We warmly acknowledge the support of the following:

Nicole Abbott
Claire Adnams
Adam Alport
Steve Barnett
Stuart Beasley
Nicky Bowden
Elisabeth Brayne
Bob Burch
Neil A. Cook
Samuel Cooke
Kelly Daly
Luther Dietrich
Finlay Edridge
Kian Farhadi
Kelly Fowler
Cameron Foye
Winston French
Robin Gissing Jr.
Warren Graham
Giulia Grisot
John Haines
Jessica Hall
Georgia Hayden
Kristina Lyn Heitkamp
Huishan
Peter Jacobs
Jae

Marty Jopson
Stephen Lawrance
Ruby Mckevitt
Dave Mitchell
Francisco Levitan Mombelli
Michael Morey
Alex Peissel
David Quinn
Alice Riley
David Robey
Siobhan Rothwell
Abhilash Sarhadi
Lyn Scott
Simon Shaw
Splik
Ying Sutton
Tania
The MAD Museum
Emma Ullah
Danica Utermöhlen
Maggie Walker
Simon Jam Wall
Simonne Waud
Dr. David E. J. Whitehead
Victoria Williams
Steph Wyeth

We’ve listed the names here as a nod to the days of subscription publishing. In the 18th century subscribers would pay for copies of a book before publication and their names would be printed on the title page, or on the opening pages.

Photo of 1786 Chambers.
Vol. I of Chambers’ Cyclopaedia, 1786.

We have a lovely example of this here at the office. On the title page of the 1786 edition of Chambers’ Cyclopaedia some 30 subscribers are listed, among them the publishers William Collins, Thomas Longman and John Murray – names that still resonate today.

It helped if you could number dukes and earls among your patrons, and even better if you could kick off with a King. As far as we are aware we did not attract a titled, let alone a regal clientele. This is okay with us, as we’re just extremely grateful for all the help we received, regardless of precedence!

"Title
On the title page of Chambers’ Cyclopaedia, 1786, some 30 subscribers are listed.

Adam Hart-Davis, Heath Robinson, Sheldrake Stories, Very Heath Robinson