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.
William Collins (publisher)
William Collins was a Scottish schoolmaster, editor and publisher who founded William Collins, Sons, now part of HarperCollins. William Collins was born at Eastwood, Renfrewshire, on 12 October 1789. He was a millworker who established a company in 1819 for printing and publishing. The business eventually published pamphlets, sermons, hymn books and prayer books as well as a wide range of office products. By 1824 he had produced the company's first dictionary, the Greek and English Lexicon. He was instrumental in bringing Thomas Chalmers from Kilmany to Glasgow. He also obtained a licence to publish the Bible in the 1840s. He was promoter of Scotland's first temperance movement. He founded the Glasgow Church Building Society which created 20 new churches. He died on 2 January 1853 at Rothesay, Buteshire.
Collecting the Offering in a Scottish Kirk by John Phillip