About Wild Places
Descent and us
Wild Places Publishing specialises in caving-related publications and was formed with book publication in mind. Its growth has, however, been closely linked with perhaps the best known of its publications,
Descent magazine.
Descent was launched as a small-format magazine in January 1969, price 2/6 (12.5p). Its first editor and publisher was Bruce Bedford – you can read the story of those early years in
Descent (210) – under various publishing names: Descent Publications, The Mendip Press and eventually Mendip Publishing. The magazine gained its ISSN of 0046-0036 with issue (35) in 1977 and moved to an A4 format with issue (40) in 1979.