Orion Publishing Group

In 1966 John Burley approached the publisher Victor Gollancz with the manuscript of A Taste of Power.

Gollancz agreed to publish the novel and thereafter continued to bring out new WJ Burley books as fast as they were written.

The paperback rights to the two Henry Pym books and early Wycliffe books were acquired by Arrow Books (Hutchinson) who published them from 1973 onwards.

In 1987 Corgi Books (Transworld) entered the story and soon gift shops all over Cornwall were displaying Wycliffe paperbacks. Covers of the early Corgi editions portrayed a pipe-smoking figure dressed in check-cloth suit and hat viewing a Cornish scene. The covers of later editions were dominated by the ubiquitous face of the actor Jack Shepherd - see Wycliffe on television.

In 1995, Wycliffe and the House of Fear was the first WJ Burley book to be published not by Victor Gollancz but by Cassell & Co who had acquired Gollancz and continued to publish Burley under its Victor Gollancz imprint.

In December 1998, Cassell & Co was acquired by the Orion Publishing Group Limited: www.orionbooks.co.uk

Wycliffe and the Guild of Nine, Burley's last finished novel, was thus published by Orion albeit still under the Victor Gollancz imprint.

Meanwhile, the paperback rights to the Wycliffe books have been reverting to Orion who are bringing out reprints under its own imprint.