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In the first years of the 19th century Benjamin Crosby and two assistants, William Simpkin and Richard Marshall, ran Crosby & Co., a firm "supplying provincial firms with books and acting as an agent for their publications". Following Crosby's illness in 1814, the firm became known as Simpkin and Marshall.
The firm changed its name to Simpkin, Marshall & Co in 1828, and during the 19th century it became the largest book wholesaler in the United Kingdom.
Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. was formed in 1889 as the result of the merger of the three firms: Simpkin, Marshall & Co. Hamilton, Adams & Co., and W. Kent & Co.,
In addition to its wholesale business, Simpkin & Marshal was a general book publisher both of fiction and non fiction. It also published a few scores, such as Robert Cocks & Co.'s Hand-book of glees, catches, canons, madrigals and part-songs edited by Joseph Warren (1804—1881) (ca.1860). Finally just before WW1 it published several books of folk songs by Cecil Sharp, including English folk-chanteys, Folk songs from Somerset (1904), and A Midsummer Night's Dream
