Founded in 1960 in Barcelona, Lumen has always distinguished itself from opther publishers through its pursuit of two key goals: to seek authors and works with the potential to become contemporary classics and to ensure that the best literature of the past remains available to the reading public. In 2001, Lumen became part of the Random House Mondadori  joint venture. Its titles are edited and distributed in all the Random House Mondadori territories.

Lumen’s fiction catalogue is represented by authors consecrated into the canon by time like Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Giorgio Bassani and Dorothy L. Sayers, as well as writers who can be considered today’s classics such as Umberto Eco, Cristina Peri Rossi, Gustavo Martín Garzo, Juan Marsé and Joyce Carol Oates. Right beside these grand names are those who Lumen’s team considers the classics of tomorrow: Teresa Moure, Javier Argüello, Tracy Chevalier and Diane Setterfield, among others.

Lumen also publishes poetry —both classics and contemporary works— by consecrated poets such as Pablo Neruda and Federico García Lorca. Rigorously edited bilingual editions of collections by Philip Larkin, Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Graves, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson also stand out in the catalogue. Lumen’s nonfiction list is distinguished by its literary character: From Cyril Connolly’s Obra selecta (Selected Works) to Quentin Bell’s biography of Virginia Woolf to Umberto Eco’s La historia de la belleza (The History of Beauty) and Alberto Manguel’s Una historia de la lectura (The History of Reading).

Special mention should be made of Lumen’s introduction of the Mafalda comics in Spain, along with the rest of Quino’s work, and Argentina’s caustic Maitena with her collection of Mujeres alteradas (Women on the Edge).