Lever Brothers, Ltd.
From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia
Lever Brothers, Ltd. was a British manufacturing company based in Port Sunlight, Birkenhead (near Liverpool, UK), founded in 1885 by brothers William Hesketh Lever (1851–1925) and James Darcy Lever (1854–1916). They invested in and successfully promoted a new soap-making process invented by chemist William Hough Watson. In 1930, Lever Brothers merged with Margarine Unie to form Unilever.
In 1884, William Lever who ran a successful wholesale family grocery business, started producing a new type of household soap. The product contains copra or pine kernel oil, which helps it lather more easily than traditional soaps made of animal fats. Unusually for the time, Lever gives the soap a brand name – Sunlight – and sells it wrapped in distinctive packs.[1]
Lever Brothers also published The Sunlight Year-Book.
In 1893, the company published 1 novel written by Arthur Conan Doyle which was given free in exchange for soap wrappers.
Conan Doyle published by Lever Brothers
1893
- A Study in Scarlet:A Detective Story (The Sunlight Library) 40 illustrations by Georges Hutchinson