Obverse Books
Entry updated 6 April 2026. Tagged: Publisher.
UK Small Press founded in Edinburgh in 2008 by Stuart Douglas, initially to publish fiction related to the Doctor Who (1963-current) spinoff character Iris Wildthyme, created by Paul Magrs for his Phoenix Court series. The first title was the anthology Iris Wildthyme and the Celestial Omnibus (anth 2009); further anthologies and novels in the Iris Wildthyme sequence (2005-2019) followed.
In 2010 Obverse acquired rights to publish Faction Paradox (2011-2018), a Doctor Who spin-off originally created by Lawrence Miles, beginning with A Romance in Twelve Parts (anth 2011). This again expanded into several Shared World novels and anthologies, including the sequences The City of the Saved (2012-2018) and Worlds of the Spiral Politic (2022-2025).
Obverse diversified in 2011 with the subscription-based Obverse Quarterly paperbacks series that ran until 2013, featuring genre stories (some, but not all, Doctor Who-related) by authors including George Mann, Paul Magrs and Michael Moorcock, alongside tete-beche collections. An ebook-only imprint, Manleigh Books, ran from 2012 to 2016, publishing among others the The Periodic Adventures of Señor 105 begun by Cody Schell. In 2013 Obverse obtained rights to the Sexton Blake sequence, relaunching the Sexton Blake Library with The Silent Thunder Caper (2014) by Mark Hodder.
The company's most prominent output began in 2016 with The Black Archive, a series of book-length critical studies of individual Doctor Who storylines, with over 80 volumes by early 2026. Two Black Archive volumes won New Zealand's Sir Julius Vogel Award for Best Professional Publication: Full Circle (2019) and Paradise Towers (2023), both by John Toon. Sister series followed: The Silver Archive (2017-2022), covering other genre television such as Millennium (1996-1999), Survivors (1975-1977) and Stranger Things (2016-2025); and The Gold Archive (2022), focusing on Star Trek.
Other output includes the Doctor Who sequence Paradise Towers (2022-2025) and eight anthologies released for various charity projects. [PKo]
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