Sir Ernest John Pickstone Benn, 2nd Baronet

British publisher

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Born:: June 25, 1875, Hackney, Middlesex, Eng.

Died:: Jan. 17, 1954, Oxted, Surrey (aged 78)

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Sir Ernest John Pickstone Benn, 2nd Baronet (born June 25, 1875, Hackney, Middlesex, Eng.—died Jan. 17, 1954, Oxted, Surrey) was a British publisher whose Sixpenny Library and Sixpenny Poets were among the first popular series of paperback educational books.

Benn was the eldest son of Sir John Williams Benn, who was a trade-journal publisher and a Liberal member of Parliament. While his father pursued political interests, the son assumed management of the family publishing business before he was 21. He enlarged it to include hardcover and paperback books, as well as additional periodicals. The firm (Ernest Benn Ltd.) became publisher of the well-known series of travel books (Blue Guides) edited by L. Russell Muirhead.

During World War I he served in the ministries of munitions and reconstruction. He succeeded to his father’s baronetcy in 1922. His strong individualist views are expressed in some of his works: The Confessions of a Capitalist (1925), “Governed to Death” (pamphlet, 1948), and The State the Enemy (1953).

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