Andrew Melrose was a British

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

 publisher. Although he was noted for publishing theological works, he was also active in promoting new fiction, and offered a substantial cash prize for the best first novel submitted to his firm.

Life and works

Melrose was born in Edinburgh. Much of his early career was spent at the London Ludgate Hill

Ludgate Hill

Ludgate Hill is a hill in the City of London, near the old Ludgate, a gate to the City that was taken down, with its attached gaol, in 1780. Ludgate Hill is the site of St Paul's Cathedral, traditionally said to have been the site of a Roman temple of the goddess Diana. It is one of the three...

 offices of the Sunday School Union, where from 1893 he published the Sunday School Chronicle.

He began publishing under his own name around 1899 in York Street, Covent Garden

Covent Garden

Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...

, finally moving to an address next door to Macmillan

Macmillan Publishers

Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...

 in St. Martin Street, Leicester Square

Leicester Square

Leicester Square is a pedestrianised square in the West End of London, England. The Square lies within an area bound by Lisle Street, to the north; Charing Cross Road, to the east; Orange Street, to the south; and Whitcomb Street, to the west...

. Among the early writers he encouraged and published was W.E. Cule, a friend and colleague from the Sunday School Union.

Between 1900 and 1903 Melrose published and contributed to a weekly paper Boys of the Empire, the official organ of the Boys Empire League. The League's stated purpose was" to promote and strengthen a worthy Imperial Spirit in British-born boys". The paper was edited by Howard Spicer

Howard Spicer

Howard Handley Spicer, Sir, KBE, was a prominent papermaker and wholesale stationer and a magazine editor...

 (later Sir Howard).

Melrose gained a reputation for publishing distinctive books of a theological kind. He was described as "an extremely shrewd, somewhat dour Scotsman, possessing a keen sense of literary values". He was one of the pioneers of offering substantial money prizes to aspiring authors. Two early winners of the 250-guinea prize were Agnes E.Jacomb

Agnes E.Jacomb

Agnes E. Jacomb, pseud: Agnes Elizabeth Jacomb-Hood was an English novelist, born in London. She began her literary career by winning the 250-guinea prize in the Melrose First Novel Competition with The Faith of His Fathers: A Story of Some Idealists . The novel was a commercial as well as a...

 for her first novel The Faith of His Fathers (1909) and Patricia Wentworth

Patricia Wentworth

Patricia Wentworth was a British crime fiction writer.She was born in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, India . She was educated privately and at Blackheath High School in London. After the death of her first husband, George F. Dillon, in 1906, she settled in Camberley, Surrey...

 for A Marriage Under The Terror (1910). In 1913, Margaret Peterson

Margaret Peterson

Margaret Peterson was a popular English novelist. She also wrote under the pseudonym Glint Green. In 1913, she won the 250-guinea Melrose prize for her first novel The Lure of the Little Drum...

 won the prize for her novel The Lure of the Little Drum. A notable winner was Catherine Carswell

Catherine Carswell

Catherine Roxburgh Carswell was a Scottish author, biographer and journalist, now known as one of the few women who took part in the Scottish Renaissance...

 for her novel Open the Door (1920). Melrose also had a keen sense of book design, commissioning illustrations from some of the leading illustrators of his day such as Charles Robinson

Charles Robinson (illustrator)

Charles Robinson was a prolific British book illustrator.Born in Islington in October 1870, London, he was the son of an illustrator and his brothers Thomas Heath Robinson and William Heath Robinson also became illustrators. He served an apprenticeship as a printer and took art lessons in the...

, Florence Meyerheim

Florence Meyerheim

Florence Meyerheim was a British illustrator of children's books. She was born in Barton upon Irwell. She illustrated books by a group of contemporary authors who were associated with the Religious Tract Society, the Sunday School Union and publisher Andrew Melrose, one of the first being W.E....

, Amelia Bauerle

Amelia Bauerle

Amelia Bauerle was a London-born painter, illustrator and etcher who was also known as Amelia Bowerley. She was the daughter of the German artist Karl Wilhelm Bauerle. She studied at the South Kensington School of Art and the Slade before travelling in Italy and Germany...

 and William Gordon Mein

Will G. Mein

Will G. Mein was a British book illustrator who flourished in the late 19th to early 20th century. He lived in London from around the turn of the century.- Life and works :Mein was born in Kelso, Roxburgh, Scotland...

.

Melrose was not afraid of courting controversy in his choice of authors. In 1915 he published Caradoc Evans

Caradoc Evans

David Caradoc Evans , was a Welsh story writer, novelist and playwright. Caradoc met and later married the Countess Helene Marguerite Barcynska, who wrote romantic novels under the name Oliver Sandys...

's story collection My People, a work that provoked outrage for its depiction of Welsh society. He was also responsible for introducing David Grayson

Ray Stannard Baker

Ray Stannard Baker , also known by his pen name David Grayson, was an American journalist and author born in Lansing, Michigan...

 to English readers and for publishing the letters of Donald Hankey

Donald Hankey

Donald William Alers Hankey was an English soldier best known for two volumes of essays about the British volunteer army in World War I both titled A Student in Arms.-Biography:...

.

The book on which Melrose chiefly prided himself was The House with the Green Shutters

The House with the Green Shutters

The House with the Green Shutters is a novel by the Scottish writer George Douglas Brown, first published in 1901 by John MacQueen. Set in mid-19th century Ayrshire, in the fictitious town of Barbie which is based on his native Ochiltree, it consciously violates the conventions of the sentimental...

by George Douglas Brown

George Douglas Brown

George Douglas Brown was a Scottish novelist, best known for his highly influential realist novel The House with the Green Shutters , which was published the year before his death at the age of 33.-Life and work:...

. Melrose had met Brown through Howard Spicer, and the two encouraged Brown to write his grim story of a Scottish village. The following year, Brown died unexpectedly of pneumonia at Melrose's house in Hornsey

Hornsey

Hornsey is a district in London Borough of Haringey in north London in England. Whilst Hornsey was formerly the name of a parish and later a municipal borough of Middlesex, today, the name refers only to the London district. It is an inner-suburban area located north of Charing Cross.-Locale:The ...

. Melrose published a memorial edition of Brown's House with the Green Shutters in 1923 and subsequently unveiled a memorial to the author in his Ayrshire

Ayrshire

Ayrshire is a registration county, and former administrative county in south-west Scotland, United Kingdom, located on the shores of the Firth of Clyde. Its principal towns include Ayr, Kilmarnock and Irvine. The town of Troon on the coast has hosted the British Open Golf Championship twice in the...

 birthplace.

Under the pseudonym of A.E.Macdonald, Melrose wrote popular biographies of missionary Alexander Murdoch Mackay

Alexander Murdoch Mackay

Alexander Murdoch Mackay was a Presbyterian missionary to Uganda. He studied at the Free Church Training School for Teachers at Edinburgh, then at Edinburgh University, and finally at Berlin...

. British statesman William Ewart Gladstone

William Ewart Gladstone

William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...

 and explorer Henry Morton Stanley

Henry Morton Stanley

Sir Henry Morton Stanley, GCB, born John Rowlands , was a Welsh journalist and explorer famous for his exploration of Africa and his search for David Livingstone. Upon finding Livingstone, Stanley allegedly uttered the now-famous greeting, "Dr...

.

In 1927 Melrose's publishing business was taken over by the Hutchinson

Hutchinson (publisher)

Hutchinson & Co. was an English book publisher, founded in 1887. The company merged with Century Publishing in 1985 to form Century Hutchinson, and was folded into the British Random House Group in 1989, where it remains as an imprint in the Cornerstone Publishing division...

 group and became known as Andrew Melrose Limited. It published religious and general titles and the imprint lasted until the mid-1950s. Melrose's son Douglas Melrose, who was associated with his father's business, founded the publishing firm of Melrose and Co. of St. Martin's Lane

St. Martin's Lane

St. Martin's Lane is a street on the edge of Covent Garden in Central London, which runs from the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, after which it is named, near Trafalgar Square northwards to Long Acre.A narrow street with relatively little traffic, St...

.

Melrose prize winners

The Melrose prize was awarded eight times between 1908 and 1923, and seven of the winners were women.

Year awarded	Writer	Title	Adjudicators
1909	Agnes E.Jacomb Agnes E.Jacomb Agnes E. Jacomb, pseud: Agnes Elizabeth Jacomb-Hood was an English novelist, born in London. She began her literary career by winning the 250-guinea prize in the Melrose First Novel Competition with The Faith of His Fathers: A Story of Some Idealists . The novel was a commercial as well as a...	The Faith of His Fathers	Andrew Lang Andrew Lang Andrew Lang was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.- Biography :Lang was born in Selkirk... , W. L. Courtney William Leonard Courtney William Leonard Courtney was an English author, born at Poona, India, and educated at Oxford. In 1873 he became headmaster of Somersetshire College, Bath, and in 1894 editor of the Fortnightly Review.-Works:... , Clement K. Shorter Clement King Shorter Clement King Shorter was a British journalist and literary critic.-Biography:Clement Shorter was born in London, the youngest of three boys. The son of Richard and Elizabeth Shorter, young Clement attended school from 1863 to 1871 in Downham Market, Norfolk...
1910	Patricia Wentworth Patricia Wentworth Patricia Wentworth was a British crime fiction writer.She was born in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, India . She was educated privately and at Blackheath High School in London. After the death of her first husband, George F. Dillon, in 1906, she settled in Camberley, Surrey...	A Year Under the Terror	Flora Annie Steel Flora Annie Steel Flora Annie Steel was an English writer. She was the daughter of George Webster. In 1867 she married a member of the Indian civil service, and for the next twenty-two years lived in India, chiefly in the Punjab, with which most of her books are connected.When her husband's health was weak, Flora... , Mary Cholmondeley Mary Cholmondeley Mary Cholmondeley was an English novelist.The daughter of the vicar at St Luke's Church in the village of Hodnet, Market Drayton, Shropshire, England, where she was born, Cholmondeley spent much of the first thirty years of her life taking care of her sickly mother... , Mrs. Henry de la Pasture Mrs Henry de la Pasture Mrs Henry de la Pasture , born Elizabeth Lydia Rosabelle Bonham and after her second marriage styled Lady Clifford, was a British novelist and dramatist.-Biography:... .
1911	Miriam Alexander Miriam Alexander Miriam Alexander, later Mrs Harold Stokes, was a British-born author of historical novels with Irish settings.She was born at Birkenhead and educated at home, except for a short period at Alexandra College, Dublin...	The House of Lisronan	A. E. W. Mason, E. F.Benson, W. J. Locke William John Locke William John Locke was a novelist and playwright, born in Cunningsbury St George, Christ Church, Demerara, British Guyana on the 20 March 1863, the elder son of John Locke, Bank Manager, of Barbados, and his first wife, Sarah Elizabeth. His parents were English. In 1864 his family moved to...
1913	Margaret Peterson Margaret Peterson Margaret Peterson was a popular English novelist. She also wrote under the pseudonym Glint Green. In 1913, she won the 250-guinea Melrose prize for her first novel The Lure of the Little Drum...	The Lure of the Little Drum	Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad was a Polish-born English novelist.Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties... , Mary Cholmondeley, W. J. Locke
1914	Marius Lyle Marius Lyle Marius Lyle was the pseudonym of Una Maud L. Smyth a British novelist and short story writer.She won the 1916 Melrose prize for her debut novel Unhappy in Thy Daring. Set in Ireland, it tells of a husband and wife's growing estrangement which is being nurtured by the wife's sister. H. G...  (Una Maud L. Smyth)	Unhappy in Thy Daring	H. G. Wells H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games... . W. L. Courtney, A. E. W. Mason
1920	Catherine Carswell Catherine Carswell Catherine Roxburgh Carswell was a Scottish author, biographer and journalist, now known as one of the few women who took part in the Scottish Renaissance...	Open the Door!	Andrew Melrose
1921	Isabel Beaumont (Constance Isabel Smith Constance Isabel Smith Constance Isabel Smith was a British novelist who also wrote under the pseudonyms Isabel Beaumont and Eleanor Reid.Writing as Isabel Beaumont, she won the 250-guinea Melrose prize for her 1922 novel Smokeless Burning... )	Smokeless Burning
1923	A.G. Thornton A.G. Thornton - Life and works :Thornton was born in Secunderabad, India, the son of James Thornton, a physical drill teacher, and Mary Thornton. The family returned to England soon after, and Thornton was raised in Hornsey, Middlesex. In 1911 their residence was 8 Summerhill Road, South Tottenham, London. He...	An Astronomer at Large