Richard Appignanesi

• Born 1940-12-20 · Died 2025-04-08

In 1974, Appignanesi co-founded the Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, Ltd. in London with a group of writers that included John Berger, Arnold Wesker, Lisa Appignanesi, Chris Searle and Glenn Thompson. In 1976, Appignanesi translated into English and published Mexican cartoonist Rius’ Marx para principiantes with the English title Marx for Beginners. The book's instant popularity prompted the development of the Cooperative's international ...For Beginners series of illustrated documentary books, Writers and Readers' most ambitious undertaking. With Appignanesi as originating editor, the series was considered very successful, with translations into 16 languages and sales of well over a million copies. It earned Appignanesi a Directors Club (New York) Merit Award for art direction in 1980. The cooperative disbanded in 1984. In 1991, together with Peter Pugh and Jeremy Cox, Appignanesi co-founded and became director of Icon Books Ltd., where he continued his originating editorship of the original illustrated ...For Beginners books, but now re-titled the Introducing... series. Under that imprint, the series has expanded to include over 100 titles of illustrated texts on topics in the areas of philosophy, politics, science and the arts. In 2007, Appignanesi undertook a project explicitly targeting a youthful audience. The series, Manga Shakespeare, consists of Appignanesi's adaptations of several of Shakespeare's plays in which the storyboards are created using selected but direct, unaltered quotations from the original texts, with illustrations by prominent UK-based manga artists.