History of Pearson Longman

Pearson Longman is a publishing house with long tradition and one of the leading publishers in the field of education and professional development. Long ago, in 1724. Thomas Longman I printed the first book that was prepared for printing by Benjamin Franklin. The family ran the company until the death of Mark Longman in 1972.

In 1728 Longman published Cyclopedia: An universal dictionary of arts and sciences by Ephraim Chambers which is considered the ‘father’ of the modern encyclopaedia throughout the world, including Britannica. Longman had another great publishing achievement in 1755: A Dictionary of the English Language by Dr. Samuel Johnson – one of the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language. Another work of greatest importance was released in 1852. It was Roget’s Thesaurus which is even nowadays one of the leading dictionaries of the kind.

In 1935 Longman published the first English learner’s dictionary which used a special defining vocabulary convenient for non-native speakers who wanted to learn the language. It was The New Method English Dictionary. Since then Longman has been working on mastering the concept and construction of dictionaries in order to make language learning easier, faster and more effective. All Pearson Longman dictionaries use a defining vocabulary of 2000 words which means that the explanations are clear and comprehensible. In addition to this, each entry includes a short grammatical explanation, collocations and phrases.

Naturally, Pearson Longman has always followed contemporary technology. In 1994 it released the first interactive dictionary on CD-ROM. That same year together with BBC and the British Council it launched a multimedia series of coursebooks Look Ahead.  Since 1995 Pearson Longman has cooperated with Java Soft in order to improve its interactive courses which are used all round the world. By 2006 Pearson Longman developed the first interactive course for whitebords – Cutting Edge Digital, and thus continued tradition of introducing inovation and technology into educational process.

Longman opened its representative office in Belgrade in 1996. We have worked with a lot of private and state schools and institutions in the country ever since. We cooperate with the Ministry of Education and Sport on pilot projects and teachers’ professional development.