Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City that has published several notable American authors, including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon Holmes, Don DeLillo, 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. 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. After the merger, the Macmillan and Atheneum adult lists were merged into Scribner's, and the Scribner's children list was merged into Atheneum. The trade division, now simply "Scribner", was retained by Simon & Schuster, while the reference division and the trademarks have been owned by Gale since 1999 and Simon & Schuster licensed the Scribner trademark for trade publishing from Gale. As of 2012, Scribner is a division of Simon & Schuster under the title Scribner Publishing Group, including the Touchstone Books imprint.
The president of Scribner as of 2017 is Susan Moldow (who also held the position of publisher from 1994 to 2012), and the current publisher is Nan Graham.
Contents
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 first ventured 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 Scribner brothers were enjoined from publishing any magazine for a period.
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, and Leo Politi.
Scribner merged with Atheneum in 1978 and into Macmillan Inc. in 1984. In 1994, Macmillan was bought by Simon & Schuster. The reference division along with Charles Scribner's Sons and Scribner trademarks were sold as part of Simon & Schuster's Macmillan Library Reference (MLR) to Pearson in 1998, Pearson resold MLR to Thomson Corporation a year later. Thomson Corporation placed the acquired MLR divisions into Gale.
Presidents
Charles Scribner I (1821–1871), 1846 to 1871
John Blair Scribner (1850–1879), 1871 to 1879
Charles Scribner II (1854–1930), 1879 to 1930
Arthur Hawley Scribner (1859–1932), 1930 to 1932
Charles Scribner III (1890–1952), 1932 to 1952
Charles Scribner IV (1921–1995), 1952 to 1984
Notable authors
Edith Wharton
Henry James
Kenneth Grahame
Ernest Hemingway
Susanne Langer
Ring Lardner
Reinhold Niebuhr
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
George Santayana
Thomas Wolfe
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Thomas Wolfe
Ernest Hemingway
Ring Lardner
Erskine Caldwell
S. S. Van Dine
James Jones
Alan Paton
Simon & Schuster has published thousands of books from thousands of authors. This list represents some of the more notable authors (those who are culturally significant or have had several bestsellers) from Scribner since becoming part of Simon & Schuster.
Annie Proulx
Andrew Solomon
Anthony Doerr
Don DeLillo
Frank McCourt
Stephen King (1998–present for new releases; 2016–present for re-releases in US/Canada)
Names
Baker & Scribner, until the death of Baker in 1850
Charles Scribner Company
Charles Scribner's Sons, name retained for the reference division, now part of Gale
Scribner
Bookstores
The Scribner Bookstores are now owned by Barnes & Noble.