The Fontana Modern Masters was a series of pocket guides on writers, philosophers, and other thinkers and theorists who shaped the intellectual landscape of the twentieth century. The first five titles were published on 12 January 1970 by Fontana Books, the paperback imprint of William Collins & Co, and the series editor was Frank Kermode, who was Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. The books were very popular with students, who "bought them by the handful", according to Kermode, and they were instantly recognisable by their eye-catching covers, which featured brightly coloured abstract art and sans-serif typography.
Camus by Conor Cruise O'Brien, published by Fontana Books in 1970. The cover shows a detail from an Op Art painting by Oliver Bevan (details).
William Collins, Sons & Co., often referred to as Collins, was a Scottish printing and publishing company founded by a Presbyterian schoolmaster, William Collins, in Glasgow in 1819, in partnership with Charles Chalmers, the younger brother of Thomas Chalmers, the minister of Tron Church in Glasgow.
Collins' original site in the Townhead area of Glasgow was sold to the University of Strathclyde in the mid 1970s. The former warehouse and distribution building (originally constructed in 1960) is now the Curran Building and Andersonian Library.