History

Founded in 1961, Sphere Books began work on its first publication, the 1962 paperback

Paperback

Paperback, softback or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or paperboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples...

 edition

Edition

In printmaking, an edition is a number of prints struck from one plate, usually at the same time. This is the meaning covered by this article...

 of Gottfried Benn

Gottfried Benn

Gottfried Benn was a German essayist, novelist, and expressionist poet. A doctor of medicine, he became an early admirer, and later a critic, of the National Socialist revolution...

's The Trainee Man. Originally part of The Thomson Corporation, Sphere was sold to Pearson PLC

Pearson PLC

Pearson plc is a global media and education company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is both the largest education company and the largest book publisher in the world, with consumer imprints including Penguin, Dorling Kindersley and Ladybird...

 in 1985 and became part of Penguin

Penguin Group

The Penguin Group is a trade book publisher, the largest in the world , having overtaken Random House in 2009. The Penguin Group is the name of the incorporated division of parent Pearson PLC that oversees these publishing operations...

. The name was retired in 1990.

The current Sphere is an imprint of Little, Brown

Little, Brown and Company

Little, Brown and Company is a publishing house established by Charles Coffin Little and his partner, James Brown. Since 2006 it has been a constituent unit of Hachette Book Group USA.-19th century:...

and has recently run a competition (2007), in association with Cosmopolitan and Waterstones, to find a new 'chick lit' writer.