Publisher Information

Faber & Faber, Ltd

Though it didn’t become a firm until 1929, Faber & Faber can trace its roots back to The Scientific Press, founded in the early twentieth century. Sir Maurice and Lady Gwyer, the owners of The Scientific Press, wanted to expand into trade publishing with the help of Geoffrey Faber, which led to the establishment of Faber and Gwyer in 1925. Four years later, the Gwyers and Faber agreed to go their separate ways. Searching for…

Fantasy Press

Around 1946, Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, who eventually founded Fantasy Press, ordered a copy of Skylark of Space from its publisher, the Buffalo Book Company. Eshbach was soon frustrated by Buffalo’s delays in publishing and lack of marketing, an area in which Eshbach had gained expertise from his job as a copywriter for Glidden. He wrote to Tom Hadley of the Buffalo Book Company to offer suggestions for improving the company’s marketing techniques. As a result…

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Farrar, Straus and Giroux was originally established by Roger W. Straus and John C. Farrar in 1946. The young firm’s hodgepodge backlist included an interior-decorating how-to called Inside Your Home; Francis, the Talking Mule; and Carlo Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli (1947), a bestselling critical success and harbinger of things to come. Other commercial triumphs include: Look Younger, Live Longer by the health guru Gayelord Hauser (which sold half a million copies) and…

First Editions Library

First Editions Library is a series of exact facsimile replicas of the first editions published by Collectors’ Reprint Inc. Founded in 1987 by Henry Reath, a former president and publisher of Doubleday; his wife, Mary; and Kemp Battle, who also worked at Doubleday, the company prided itself on publishing the best of American literature as it first appeared.

FEL facsimiles have the same weight, size, typeface, art, dust jacket, finish and texture as well as points…

Folio Society

When Charles Ede, Christopher Sandford (of Golden Cockerel Press), and Alan Bott (founder of Pan Books) founded Folio Society in 1947, the goal of the firm was to produce “editions of the world’s great literature, in a format worthy of the contents, at a price within the reach of everyman.” Folio Society has been publishing beautifully crafted hardback editions of classic literature, both fiction and non-fiction, ever since. Turning timeless stories into unique objects,…

Four Walls Eight Windows

Four Walls Eight Windows is a New York City-based independent book publisher of both fiction and non-fiction. Known as Four Walls or 4W8W, the company was established in fall of 1987 by two young editors, John G. H. Oakes and Daniel Simon, who previously had an imprint under the same name at Writers and Readers Publishing.

Four Walls is noted for its dual commitment to progressive politics and adventurous, edgy literary fiction ? its publication…

Franklin Library

Franklin Library, the distribution arm of the Franklin Press, began publishing in 1973 and closed permanently in 2000. Franklin books were designed and bound by the Sloves Organization, an affiliate of the Franklin Mint, and one of the few binderies that focused solely on leather book binding. Franklin published in three styles: full genuine leather, imitation leather, and quarter-bound genuine leather. Full leather-bound editions were produced throughout the publisher’s lifespan; but the other two styles…

Franklin Watts

The internationally renowned Franklin Watts, an imprint of Scholastic (US) and Hachette (UK), publishes 100 non-fiction titles for young adults each year. Texts produced by Franklin Watts are designed to inform, educate, and entertain through a fascinating array of biographies, social studies, history, and science books.

The publishing house Franklin Watts Inc. was formed in 1942 and sold to Grolier in 1957. Franklin Watts, the namesake founder, retired in 1967. In 1969, he moved to…

Fulcrum Press

Fulcrum Press was a major avant garde poetry press started in 1965 by Stuart Montgomery, a Rhodesian-born doctor and poet. The Press launched with the publication of Basil Bunting’s Loquitur (1965) and later published his First Book of Odes (1965), Ode II/2 (1965), Briggflatts: An Autobiography (1966), and Collected Poems (1968).

During its time, Fulcrum Press published about 40 books by more than 20 writers. It made a significant contribution to the British Poetry Revival…

Funk & Wagnalls

Funk & Wagnalls was originally established as I.K. Funk & Company in 1876. A publisher of religiously oriented works, the company’s first title was Metropolitan Pulpit (later renamed Homiletic Review). In 1877, founder Isaac Kaufmann Funk was joined by one of his college classmates, Adam Willis Wagnalls, as a partner. The two changed the name of the firm to Funk & Wagnalls Company in 1890.

The publication of The Literary Digest (1890) later that year…

G.W. Carleton & Co. / G.W. Dillingham

The company was established in 1857 by George W. Carleton and Edward P. Rudd. After the death of Rudd in 1861, Carleton carried on the business alone under his own name until 1871 when he partnered with George W. Dillingham and changed the company named to G.W. Carleton & Co. When Carleton retired in 1886, Dillingham became head of the firm until his death in 1895. Under the management of Dillingham’s son, Frank, the company…

Gambit, Inc.

Gambit, Inc. is a publishing company dedicated to quality chess books for players of all levels. Three editors/chess players — John Nunn, Graham Burgess, and Murray Chandler — founded the London-based publisher in early 1997. Nunn and Burgess met while working for general publisher B.T. Batsford, which first introduced its own chess list in the late 1960s and had been considered the world’s leading chess book publisher for many years following. However, Burgess was unhappy…

George H. Doran

Established in 1908 in Toronto, George H. Doran moved the book publishing company to New York shortly thereafter. The firm prospered, publishing many genres, from major literary works to “working class” novels and “how to” books. Among the notable authors published by the company were Arthur Conan Doyle, O. Henry, and Virginia Woolf. George H. Doran Co. merged with Doubleday, Page & Co. in 1927, creating Doubleday, Doran, then the largest publishing house in the…

Gnome Press

Martin L. Greenberg wanted to make science fiction and fantasy part of the modern world of publishing, a dream that would come to true — with unintended consequences. Greenberg created Gnome Press along with David Kyle in 1948. Initially, Greenberg was in charge of the business and editorial ends of the company while Kyle handled Gnome’s production and artwork, including the design of the company logo, a gnome reading a book under a toadstool. The…

Grant Richards

British writer Franklin Thomas Grant Richards founded his own publishing house in January 1897. Under the imprint of Grant Richards, his publications that year included the Paris and Florence volumes of Grant Allen’s Historical Guides series as well as Allen’s The Evolution of the Idea of God: An Inquiry into the Origins of Religion. The next year, he published works by two major authors: George Bernard Shaw’s Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant and A.…

Gregynog Press

Sisters Gwendoline and Margaret Davies established Gregynog Press, named after their home, Gregynog Hall, in rural Mid-Wales in 1922. Early on, the press gained a reputation for producing high-quality limited edition books, primarily on a Victoria platen press, and quickly became one of the leading private presses of its day. Gregynog was unique in that all components of its books were created under one roof: design, typography, illustration, printing, and binding. But soon after World…

Grolier Club

Established in January 1884, the New York City-based Grolier Club is the oldest existing bibliophilic society in North America. Printing press manufacturer and book collector Robert Hoe founded the club along with eight others, all of whom were involved in the editing, design, production, sale and/or acquisition of fine books. The original mission of Grolier Club was “to foster the study, collecting, and appreciation of books and works on paper, their art, history, production, and…

Grosset & Dunlap

Alexander Grosset and George T. Dunlap met when both worked for American Publishers Corporation. After that firm went bankrupt in 1898, Grosset & Dunlap formed a partnership and essentially changed the focus of the publishing industry from expensive books for the few to cheaper books for the masses. Sidestepping royalties and other fees, Grosset & Dunlap got their start reprinting books that were already in print. With these profits, the partners purchased paperbound books in…

Henry Pordes Books Ltd.

Henry Pordes has been a famous name in the book trade industry for more than 50 years. A bookseller, wholesaler, and publisher of learned periodicals, academic titles, and Jewish books, the family business opened in 1983 at Charing Cross Road in London, a location renowned for its second-hand bookshops. Henry Pordes Books Ltd. specializes in antiquarian books as well as books on art, literature, history, science, and medicine.

Following the death of Henry Pordes in…

Henry T. Coates

In 1848, Robert Porter and Charles Davis founded Davis & Porter Company, a Philadelphia firm specializing in the printing of trade and art books. When Henry Coates joined the firm in 1867, it was renamed Davis, Porter & Coates. Davis retired in 1867 and the firm was renamed Porter & Coates. In 1869, G. Morrison Coates, brother of Henry Coates, joined the firm. 1895, founder Robert Porter retired, and the firm became Henry T.…