[Publisher] Wildy, Simmonds & Hill / Wildy & Sons Ltd.

This is a bit of an odd (well, extremely specialist) press and I'd never heard of them until I got one of their books from the library yesterday.

The history of Wildy & Sons goes back to when publishers, printers and booksellers were one and the same. The Wildy family would have printed and sold their own titles on the premises we operate from today. In fact, while the bookshop has been trading in Lincoln’s Inn Archway since 1830, we have evidence of books published by Wildy dating back to the early 1820s!

Throughout all these years we have continued to publish our own titles. Today these books cover not only English Law, but also International and Comparative Law.

In 2002 Brian Hill joined Wildy & Sons, and with him brought his publishing company, Simmonds & Hill. At this point the imprint became known as Wildy, Simmonds & Hill Publishing. In 2oo8 we also took over the Callow Publishing list of titles.

We are always looking to develop our list, in particular those books aimed at practitioners. Prospective authors who would like to discuss any publishing ideas should contact Andrew Riddoch.
http://www.wildy.com/about-wsh

Click to expand...

The book in question is The Telephone Murder: The Mysterious Death of Julia Wallace by Ronald Bartle. I can honestly say that it's the most horribly edited, or more likely unedited book I've ever come across that wasn't self or vanity published. Every other page bristles with apostrophe abuse, missing punctuation and the use of commas instead of full stops (and vice versa). The infamous Dr Crippen is referred to on several occasions as 'Crippin' - inexcusable for a press specializing in English law! - and, even more strangely, at one point a pound note is referred to as a dollar bill. Worst of all, on page 119 the marginal note 'more info re Spilsbury?' actually appears in the text!

Perhaps the author's status as a retired barrister meant that his book was published with little or no editorial input, but there were times when I felt like throwing The Telephone Murder against the wall. A thorough proof-read could have made it so much easier to read.