WARBURG, FREDERICK

WARBURG, FREDERICK (1898–1981), British publisher. Warburg was born in London. He was not directly related to the famous German banking family and attended a leading public school, Westminster, on a scholarship. After serving as an officer in World War I, he attended Oxford University and then entered the publishing firm of George Routledge & Sons, but was dismissed in 1935 after the death of its head. With a friend, Roger Senhouse, he purchased the failing publishing firm of Martin Secker, renaming it Secker & Warburg, and developed it into one of the most influential and prestigious firms in Britain. It is most famous for publishing George Orwell's great works Animal Farm and 1984; its other authors included such luminaries as H.G. Wells and Thomas Mann. In 1952 Warburg helped found the influential magazine Encounter, and, in 1954, defended an important obscenity lawsuit over the publication of Stanley Kaufman's The Philanderer. In later years his firm published a new string of notable works, among them The Bridge on the River Kwai and William L. Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Warburg published two volumes of autobiography, An Occupation for a Gentleman (1959) and All Authors Are Equal (1973). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: ODNB online. (William D. Rubinstein (2nd ed.)