Rayner Stephens Unwin CBE (23 December 1925 – 23 November 2000) was an English publisher. He served as the chairman of the publishing firm George Allen & Unwin, which had been founded by his father Sir Stanley Unwin.
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Early life
Unwin was born in 1925 in Hampstead, London, one of four children from the marriage of publisher Stanley Unwin and Mary née Storr (1883–1971). His father was the founder of the publishing house George Allen & Unwin. As a young boy, Unwin served as a test reader for the firm, as his father believed that children were the best judges of what made good children's books. He was paid one shilling for each written report, which as Unwin later remarked was "good money in those days".
Most notable among the reviews he wrote for his father was his 1936 report, aged 10, for the J. R. R. Tolkien book The Hobbit. "It wasn't a great piece of literary criticism," he later said of the report, "but in those happy days, no second opinion was needed; if I said it was good enough to publish, it was published."