Charles Scribner's Sons

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Charles Scribner's Sons
Scribner building
Parent company Simon & Schuster (trade), Gale (reference)
Founded 1846 (1846)
Founder Charles Scribner I,
Isaac D. Baker
Country of origin USA
Headquarters location New York City
Distribution Worldwide
Publication types Books
Fiction genres American literature

Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing a number of American authors including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon Holmes, and Edith Wharton.

The firm published Scribner's Magazine for many years. More recently, several Scribner titles and authors have garnered Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards and other merits. In 1978 the company merged with Atheneum and became The Scribner Book Companies. In turn it merged into Macmillan in 1984.

Simon & Schuster bought Macmillan in 1994. By this point only the trade book and reference book operations still bore the original family name. The former imprint, now simply "Scribner," was retained by Simon & Schuster, while the reference division has been owned by Gale since 1999.

History

The firm was founded in 1846 by Charles Scribner I and Isaac D. Baker as "Baker & Scribner". After Baker's death, Scribner bought the remainder of the company and renamed it the "Charles Scribner Company." In 1865 the company made its first venture into magazine publishing with Hours at Home.

In 1870 the Scribners organized a new firm, Scribner and Company, to publish a magazine entitled Scribner’s Monthly. After the death of Charles Scribner I in 1871, his son John Blair Scribner took over as president of the company. His other sons Charles Scribner II and Arthur Hawley Scribner would also join the firm, in 1875 and 1884. They each later served as presidents. When the other partners in the venture sold their stake to the family, the company was renamed Charles Scribner's Sons.

The company launched St. Nicholas Magazine in 1873 with Mary Mapes Dodge as editor and Frank R. Stockton as assistant editor; it became well known as a children's magazine. When the Scribner family sold the magazine company to outside investors in 1881, Scribner’s Monthly was renamed the Century Magazine. The Scribners brothers were enjoined from publishing any magazine for a period of five years.

In 1886, at the expiration of this term, they launched Scribner's Magazine. The firm's headquarters were in the Scribner Building, built in 1893, on lower Fifth Avenue at 21st Street, and later in the Charles Scribner's Sons Building, on Fifth Avenue in midtown. Both buildings were designed by Ernest Flagg in a Beaux Arts style.

The children's book division was established in 1934 under the leadership of Alice Dalgliesh. It published works by distinguished authors and illustrators including N.C. Wyeth, Robert A. Heinlein, Marcia Brown, Will James, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Leo Politi.

As of 2011 the publisher is owned by the CBS Corporation.[1]

Presidents

Names

  • Baker & Scribner, until the death of Baker in 1850
  • Charles Scribner Company
  • Charles Scribner's Sons
  • Scribner

Bookstores

The Scribner Bookstores are now owned by Barnes & Noble.

References

  1. ↑ "Columbia Journalism Review - CJR's guide to what the major media companies own". Retrieved 2011-11-28. 
  2. ↑ "Charles Scribner" (PDF). The New York Times. August 28, 1871. Retrieved 2008-07-24. "The sad news was received on Saturday evening of the death from fever on that day at Lucerne, Switzerland, of Mr. Charles Scribner, head of the eminent publishing house Charles Scribner & Company..." 
  3. ↑ "Charles Scribner Dies suddenly at 76. Publisher Succumbs to Heart Disease at Home Here. Was at Desk Thursday. Entered Firm as Youth. Directed Business His Father Founded. Fostered Work of American Authors. Firm Founded in 1846. Received Honorary Degree.". The New York Times. April 20, 1930. Retrieved 2008-07-24. "Charles Scribner, chairman of the Board of Directors of the publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons, 597 Fifth Avenue, which was founded by his father, died suddenly at 1 o'clock yesterday afternoon of heart ..." 
  4. ↑ Pace, Eric (November 13, 1995). "Charles Scribner Jr., Who Headed Publishing Company, Dies at 74". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-07-24. "Charles Scribner Jr., the longtime head of the Charles Scribner's Sons book publishing company, died on Saturday at the Mary Manning Walsh nursing home on York Avenue in Manhattan. He was 74 and lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for half a century. The cause was pneumonia, and he had suffered for a decade from a degenerative neurological disorder, said his son Charles Scribner 3d." 
  5. ↑ Bailey, Jr., Herbert S. (1997). "Charles Scribner, Jr. (13 July 1921-11 November 1995)". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 141, No. 2) 141 (2): 233–237. JSTOR 987306. 

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