Juliet Mabey (No. 4, 1966-72) founded Oneworld in 1986 with her husband shortly after leaving university. Oneworld publishes over 100 non-fiction books a year and has won two Booker Prizes and the Women’s Prize for Fiction among many other awards and prizes. Juliet recieved an OBE in 2020 for her services to publishing.

What is your favourite memory of Roedean?

I loved the sports, the art, the plays and above all the friendships at Roedean. I’m not sure it is an all-time favourite as such, but I have very fond memories of captaining our school cricket team, especially our very first away match which, though we didn’t win, was such an amazing experience and led to greater things under Bobby’s tutelage. I’m so pleased more girls are now learning to play cricket and that women have more opportunities to play at both the professional and amateur levels.

What was the best piece of advice you were given whilst at School?

This is perhaps a little odd as a piece of advice, but what struck me at the time and has stayed with me was a comment from a visiting author back in LV, I think, who was invited to give a careers talk. Someone asked her how she knew when a piece of writing is finished, and she replied that the essence of art is knowing when to stop, which applies not just to writing and painting but to so many other spheres of life, and I’ve thought of it often in my work with authors.

When you were at Roedean, what did you want to be when you ‘grew-up’?

When you’re young, people tend to tell you who they think you are and what they think you will become, but while my father thought I’d be a lawyer or politician (as someone not hesitant about communicating my opinions) I think most people, myself included, thought I’d be a journalist or perhaps a writer (or a vet). Knowing little about the world of publishing growing up, that made sense, but actually editing is such a joy and so fulfilling, I can’t imagine doing anything else.

What are you now you've grown up?

My husband and I set up Oneworld not long after leaving university, so editing and handling the multifarious tasks involved in running a publishing company has preoccupied me all my adult life, along with raising four children.

What does your job involve?

Running a publishing company necessitates having oversight of all the various elements involved in the publishing process from finding authors, engaging with literary agents and networking with partner publishers from around the world to the finished books on the shelves. That is what makes this profession so rewarding – you never stop learning, and it calls on so many different skills since you are involved to varying extents in everything from the financial and employment side of running the business to editing, design, publicity, marketing, rights, sales and international distribution.

It’s not without its stresses, particularly during a pandemic, but one of the great joys is the amazing people you work with and meet from all over the world. Over the last thirty-five years I have built up a stable of authors from virtually all corners of the world, writing in over two dozen languages, and have been introduced to an incredibly diverse range of ideas and cultures along the way. It’s an immensely rewarding and satisfying profession to work in.

What have you done that you are most proud of?

This is a harder question than it might appear. I love learning new skills and challenging myself, so after school I tried out lots of different jobs, from working in a restaurant, a circus, a farm and a kibbutz to going to agricultural college and on to university to study cultural anthropology. Each involved mastering new skills like building dry-stone walls, sheering sheep, milking cows and fertilising date trees. However, in publishing I found my true metier as a midwife of authors’ creative works, and so the achievements I’m most proud of are actually my authors’ – together they have won two Booker Prizes and the Women’s Prize for Fiction as well as countless other awards, and these are hugely satisfying for an editor.

What are the three objects you would take with you to a desert island?

Obviously a book, and assuming there’s food and water but no electricity supply for a laptop, mobile phone or radio, then a Swiss army knife and a first-aid kit would be pretty handy.

What books have had a significant influence on you and why?

I was a voracious reader as a child and throughout my time at Roedean (moonlit windowsills might just be responsible for my poor eyesight) so there are so many books that have influenced me and continue to affect the sort of books we choose to commission and publish at Oneworld, from classic childrens’ books like Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Black Beauty to the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, George Elliott, DH Lawrence and Thomas Hardy and novels like Lord of the Flies and The Catcher in the Rye.

Fiction, often considered less intellectually rewarding than its sister genre non-fiction, allows you to walk in others’ shoes, to vicariously experience others’ lives, cultures and world views. Reading Dickens at school, for example, had a massive impact on me, and opened a window onto a world I’d never seen. Though his novels failed to radically improve the lot of poor children in Victorian England, they did raise public awareness of the plight of the poor and both the social and personal impact of workhouses and the shortcomings of the Poor Laws, and today they still invite readers to empathise with the lot of those worse off than themselves, whether here or abroad. I also loved the anthropomorphic aspect of Watership Down (which I reissued recently at Oneworld), and the way through a story about animals Richard Adams was able to explore really interesting ideas about human nature, war and the way people abuse power. Ultimately, I hope the diverse range of novels we publish might also contribute to broadening readers’ views and encourage them to empathise with characters and life stories that might be unfamiliar to them.

What is on your bucket list?

I’d love to travel more, and further afield, but we don’t tend to take much time off work. Running an independent publisher is very demanding and all-consuming and publishing doesn’t have an off season as such, so we rarely take off more than a week at a time, a couple of times a year. That needs to change.

If you had one year and unlimited funds, what would you do?

Obviously there are a lot of social issues and health problems here and around the world that a generous supply of money and time could address, from investing in health facilities and curing devastating diseases to setting up free accommodation for the homeless. But looking at what might be within my wheelhouse, I would love to set up special fun, supportive after-school reading camps all over the country (a global approach might be too ambitious for one year) so every child learns to read during primary school. Sadly that is currently not the case, and over 16% of adults in England alone can be described as having very poor literacy skills. Poor literacy is obviously not just about the challenge of reading and enjoying a good book, but is something that can seriously affect mental health, job prospects and everyday life. Meanwhile we’ll aim to publish books that children can’t wait to read and support literacy initiatives where we can.