Reed Elsevier has a proud heritage stretching back to the late 19th century and to the pioneering work of two industrialists, one English and one Dutch.

Albert E Reed laid part of the foundations of what is today Reed Elsevier, when he set up a newsprint manufacturing plant at Tovil Mill in Kent, England in 1894. His business became a public company under his own name in 1903.

It was not until 1970 that the company was renamed Reed International Limited. It expanded through merger and acquisitions and by producing industrial magazines through its subsidiary IPC Business Press Ltd and consumer magazines through IPC Magazines Ltd. In 1982, the name changed again to Reed International PLC and, in 2002, to Reed Elsevier PLC.

Other foundations for the group were laid in 1880, when Jacobus George Robbers set up a publishing company in Rotterdam. He called it Elsevier after a 16th Century family of booksellers and printers who had, among other things, published the works of the Dutch philosopher, Erasmus.

In the first half of the 20th century the company remained a relatively small, family-owned business. But it expanded rapidly after the Second World War thanks largely to the highly successful weekly Elseviers Weekblad. In 1951, Elsevier Press Inc was set up in the US.

Some ten years later, offices had been opened in New York and London. The rapid growth continued in the 1970s and, by the end of that decade, the company had been renamed Elsevier Scientific Publishers. Other acquisitions and mergers continued this growth, including the purchase of the UK’s Pergamon Press in 1991, two years before the merger that created Reed Elsevier.