Reginald Caton
English publisher

Reginald Ashley Caton (1897–1971) was an English publisher. He appears as a literary character, especially in novels by Kingsley Amis.
In 1924, he founded the Fortune Press in London, specialising in gay erotica. Repeated legal difficulties saw his prosecution for obscene libel in 1934.
Caton is celebrated for obtaining the rights to Dylan Thomas's 18 Poems, which he published in 1934, with repercussions for the poet. During the war years, he first rejected Philip Larkin's first novel Jill (for obscenity), but finally published it in 1946, as he did his poetry collection, The North Ship. No manuscript version of Jill has survived.
Caton also published, for example, Nicholas Moore and Wrenne Jarman. Experts have concluded that there was no literary, rather than business, consistency. In 1951, he published Bryan Magee's first book, an anthology of poems entitled Crucifixion and Other Poems.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7308641. VIAF identifies the subject as 77805797. The Library of Congress control number is n86142209. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1897, 1971, 1924 and 1934.
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This entry incorporates text from “Reginald Caton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.