It is with sadness that one learns of the death on 8 August at the age of 77 of the publisher Frank Cass. He founded the publishing firm of Frank Cass and Co. in 1957, specializing in the production of books and journals in the fields of humanities and social sciences. In the course of fifty years, he built the company into a leading academic publisher. Among his sixty journals was this one, produced by Frank Cass and Co. from 1973 to 2003, after which it was taken over by Taylor and Francis.
Frank took a close interest in the progress of the journal and its editors, and despite infrequent policy disagreements, he was a loyal and supportive publisher. He was always present at the annual editorial meeting, which I attended from the early 1990s onwards. These occasions were enlivened not just by a large meal, but also by his seemingly inexhaustible source of humorous anecdotes.
I got to know Frank better during 2000, in the course of what were then daily communications. It was at this time that he told me much about what he termed the hidden background history of this journal, including the crucial role played by Teodor Shanin in founding The Journal of Peasant Studies. The generous tribute he paid to Teodor –‘without him there would have been no JPS’– applies equally to Frank himself.
T.B.