Andrew Melrose

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Andrew Melrose (1860–1928) was a British publisher known for both theology books and for promoting new fiction. He also offered a large cash prize for the best first novel submitted to his firm.

He was born in Midlothian and spent much of his early career at the London 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 Covent Garden, later moving to an address near Macmillan in St. Martin Street, Leicester Square. One of the early writers he encouraged was W. E. Cule.

From 1900 to 1903 Melrose published and contributed to a weekly paper, Boys of the Empire, the official organ of the Boys Empire League, which aimed to promote a strong imperial spirit in British-born boys. The league’s editor was Howard Spicer.

In 1911 Melrose lived in Highgate with his wife Margaret and their children. He gained a reputation for publishing distinctive theological works and was described as a shrewd, dour Scotsman with a keen sense of literary value. He was a pioneer in offering substantial prizes to aspiring authors, notably 250 guineas. Early prize winners included Agnes E. Jacomb for The Faith of His Fathers (1909), Patricia Wentworth for A Marriage Under The Terror (1910), Margaret Peterson for The Lure of the Little Drum (1913), and Catherine Carswell for Open the Door (1920).

Melrose also cared about book design, commissioning illustrations from leading illustrators. He did not shy away from controversy, publishing Caradoc Evans's My People in 1915 for its portrayal of Welsh society. He helped introduce David Grayson to English readers and published Donald Hankey’s letters. He highly regarded George Douglas Brown’s The House with the Green Shutters, which he had urged Brown to write; Brown died in 1913 at Melrose’s house in Hornsey, and Melrose published a memorial edition in 1923 and later unveiled a memorial in Ayrshire.

Under the pseudonym E. A. Macdonald, Melrose wrote popular biographies of Alexander Mackay, William Ewart Gladstone, and Henry Morton Stanley. In 1927 his publishing business was taken over by the Hutchinson group and became Andrew Melrose Limited, continuing to publish religious and general titles until the mid-1950s. His son Douglas helped run Melrose and Co. of St Martin’s Lane. The Melrose Prize was awarded eight times between 1908 and 1923, with seven of the winners being women.