March 15, 1958

Michael Joseph (September 26, 1897 to March 15, 1958) was a British writer, editor and publisher. He often referred to himself as a journalist. Michael Joseph married several times: his first wife was Hermione Gingold. His first book, Short Story Writing for Profit (1923), was followed by Journalism for Profit (1924) and The Commercial Side of Literature (1925). He and Gingold were married from 1918 to 1926. Joseph may have recognised a market for cat books, because there were multiple cat related books in his bibliography. Some were anthologies of cat stories he edited; I have not been able to confirm all the bibliographic details for each book. I mention the publisher in parentheses in this next list, since Joseph himself in 1935 started a publishing house, but often his own books were still put out by other publishers.

Cat's Company (Geoffrey Bles), 1930

A Book of Cats, being twenty drawings by [Tsuguharu] Foujita,with poems in prose by         Michael Joseph (Covici-Friede) 1930 

Puss in Books: A collection of stories about cats he edited ( Dodd, Mead) 1932

Kittens and Cats (Whitman), 1938

Charles: The story of a friendship (Joseph) 1943. This is a 91 page account of a cat named Charles, his own I believe

Best Cat Stories (Faber), 1952. This book is one Michael Joseph edited and for which he wrote an introduction.

Michael Joseph set up a publishing house, Michael Joseph Ltd, in 1935, and attracted an impressive list of authors.  I have stressed the folks I know wrote about cats but this is not meant to characterize the publishing house. He put out books by James Herriot, Vita Sackville-West, and Paul Gallico, for example.

Another sub-category of books Michael Joseph Ltd published were of a philosophical bent, like Bertrand Russell. We also have:

The Wisdom of India, edited by Lin, Yutang (1944)
A Venture of Faith: Being a Description of the World Congress of Faiths held in London in 1936, by Francis Edward Younghusband, (1937)
and other such titles. 

Anthea Joseph, his third wife, kept the company together after his death and in 1985 Michael Joseph Ltd was acquired by Penguin Books.