Alma Books was set up in October 2005 by Alessandro Gallenzi and Elisabetta Minervini, the founders of Hesperus Press. Following its takeover of the Oneworld Classics list in February 2012, it now publishes around seventy new titles a year, mainly in the field of contemporary literary fiction and classics. Alma takes around forty per cent of its titles from English-language originals, while the rest are translations from French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Japanese and other languages.