Charles Scribner's Sons

Charles Scribner's Sons

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

"Scribner's" redirects here. For other uses, see Scribner (disambiguation).

Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply 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, 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, which in turn was 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, and later also 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 a well-known magazine for children, St. Nicholas Magazine, in 1873 with Mary Mapes Dodge as editor and Frank R. Stockton as assistant editor. The Scribner family sold this company to outside investors in 1881 and Scribner’s Monthly was renamed the Century Magazine, with the Scribners enjoined from publishing any magazine for a period of five years. In 1886, at the expiration of this term, Scribner's Magazine was launched.

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.

Presidents

• Charles Scribner I (1821–1871) 1846 to 1871^[1]
• John Blair Scribner (1850–1879) 1871 to 1879
• Charles Scribner II (1854–1930) 1879 to ?^[2]
• Arthur Hawley Scribner (1859–1932) circa 1900
• Charles Scribner III (1890–1952) 1932 to 1952
• Charles Scribner IV (1921–1995) 1952 to 1984^[3][4]

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. ^ "Charles Scribner" (PDF). The New York Times. August 28, 1871. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A06E7D7153CE63ABC4051DFBE66838A669FDE. 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..." 
2. ^ "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. http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10914FA345A147A93C2AB178FD85F448385F9. 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 ..." 
3. ^ Pace, Eric (November 13, 1995). "Charles Scribner Jr., Who Headed Publishing Company, Dies at 74". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F03E4DB1539F930A25752C1A963958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all. 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." 
4. ^ 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. 

External links

Wikisource has original works published by or about:

Charles Scribner's Sons

• The House of Scribner
• Charles Scribner's Sons at Thomson Gale
• Charles Scribner's Sons Art Reference Department records at the Smithsonian Archives of American Art