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| Parent company | SAMS Publishing (1959–1985) |
|---|---|
| Status | Defunct |
| Founded | 1850 |
| Founder | Samuel Merrill |
| Defunct | 1985 |
| Successor | Macmillan |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | Indianapolis, Indiana |
The Bobbs-Merrill Company was a book publisher located in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The company began in 1850 October 3 when Samuel Merrill bought an Indianapolis bookstore and entered the publishing business. After his death in 1855, his son, Samuel Merrill, Jr. continued the business. Soon after the American Civil War (1861–1865) the business became Merrill, Meigs, and Company, and in 1883 the name changed again to the Bowen-Merrill Company. In 1903 the name became the Bobbs-Merrill Company, after long-time director, William Conrad Bobbs. From 1899 through 1909, the company published 16 novels whose sales placed each of them among the nation's top ten best-selling books of the year for one or more years.[ citation needed ]
The company was plaintiff in Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus , 210 U.S. 339 (1908), a case regarded[ by whom? ] as the origin of copyright's first-sale doctrine.[ citation needed ]
Bobbs-Merrill was known for publishing such authors as Keith Ayling, Erving Goffman, Richard Halliburton, David Markson, Walter Dean Myers, Ayn Rand, James Whitcomb Riley, Mary Roberts Rinehart and Irma S. Rombauer. [1] Of note, Irma S. Rombauer wrote The Joy of Cooking , Mary Roberts Rinehart wrote The Circular Staircase (1908) and Keith Ayling wrote The Story of Old Leatherneck of the Flying Tigers (1945). Bobbs-Merrill also published the early works of fantasy writer L. Frank Baum.
Bobbs-Merrill was responsible for a long period in its history for publishing the codified state laws of the State of Indiana and of other U.S. states. [1] The firm also published legal and school textbooks, children's books (including The Wizard of Oz and "27 titles in the Raggedy Ann series"), [2] [3] and texts in the history of philosophy.
In 1944, Bobbs-Merrill commissioned artist Evelyn Copelman to illustrate a new edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , reprinted as The Wizard of Oz and The New Wizard of Oz. Copelman's illustrations were more influenced by the 1939 Judy Garland MGM film version of the book than by W. W. Denslow's original 1900 illustrations, although the credits on the book stated otherwise. The year that Copelman's illustrations first appeared, 1949, was also the year of the film's first re-release.
In 1959, The Howard W. Sams Company purchased Bobbs-Merrill. When Sams was acquired by Macmillan in 1985, the Bobbs-Merrill name ceased being used, with the exception of continued sales of the Fifth Revision of The Joy of Cooking . This book continued to be a steady seller for Macmillan. There were also selected College Division titles, such as the Library of Liberal Arts. [4]
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a 1900 children's novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. It is the first novel in the Oz series of books. A Kansas farm girl named Dorothy ends up in the magical Land of Oz after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their home by a cyclone. Upon her arrival in the magical world of Oz, she learns she cannot return home until she has destroyed the Wicked Witch of the West.
Richard Halliburton was an American travel writer and adventurer who swam the length of the Panama Canal and paid the lowest toll in its history—36 cents in 1928. He disappeared at sea while attempting to sail the Chinese junk Sea Dragon across the Pacific Ocean from Hong Kong to the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco, California.
Joy of Cooking, often known as "The Joy of Cooking", is one of the United States' most-published cookbooks. It has been in print continuously since 1936 and has sold more than 20 million copies. It was published privately during 1931 by Irma S. Rombauer (1877–1962), a homemaker in St. Louis, Missouri, after her husband's suicide the previous year. Rombauer had 3,000 copies printed by A.C. Clayton, a company which had printed labels for fancy St. Louis shoe companies and for Listerine mouthwash, but never a book. Beginning in 1936, the book was published by a commercial printing house, the Bobbs-Merrill Company. With nine editions, Joy of Cooking is considered the most popular American cookbook.
Raggedy Ann is a character created by American writer Johnny Gruelle (1880–1938) that appeared in a series of books he wrote and illustrated for young children. Raggedy Ann is a rag doll with red yarn for hair and a triangle nose. The character was created in 1915, as a doll, and was introduced to the public in the 1918 book Raggedy Ann Stories. When a doll was marketed with the book, the concept had great success. A sequel, Raggedy Andy Stories (1920), introduced the character of her brother, Raggedy Andy. Further characters such as Beloved Belindy, a black mammy doll, were featured as dolls and characters in books.
John Barton Gruelle was an American artist, political cartoonist, children's book and comics author, illustrator, and storyteller. He is best known as the creator of Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy dolls and as the author/illustrator of dozens of books. He also created the Beloved Belindy doll. Gruelle also contributed cartoons and illustrations to at least ten newspapers, four major news syndicates, and more than a dozen national magazines. He was the son of Hoosier Group painter Richard Gruelle.
Toto is a fictional dog in L. Frank Baum's Oz series of children's books, and works derived from them. He was originally a small terrier drawn by W. W. Denslow for the first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). He reappears in later Oz books and in numerous adaptations, such as The Wizard of Oz (1939) and The Wiz (1978).
Samuel Merrill, a native of Peacham, Vermont, was an early lawyer and leading citizen of Indiana, who served as state treasurer from 1822 to 1834. Merrill attended Dartmouth College, and in 1816 settled in Vevay, Indiana, where he established a law practice and served in the Indiana General Assembly as a representative from Switzerland County (1821–22). Merrill resigned his position as state treasurer in 1834 to become the president of the State Bank of Indiana (1834–44); he also served as the president of the Madison and Indianapolis Railroad Company (1844–48) and head of the Merrill Publishing Company, which later became the Bobbs-Merrill Company. In addition to his government service and business ventures, Merrill was the second president of the Indiana Historical Society (1835–48), a founder and trustee of Wabash College, and an elder in the Second Presbyterian and Fourth Presbyterian churches in Indianapolis.
Irma Rombauer was an American cookbook author, best known for The Joy of Cooking (1931), one of the world's most widely read cookbooks. Following Irma Rombauer's death, periodic revisions of the book were carried out by her daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker, and subsequently by Marion's son Ethan Becker. The Joy of Cooking remains in print, edited by members of the Rombauer–Becker family, and more than 18 million copies have been sold.
Grosset & Dunlap is a New York City-based publishing house founded in 1898.
Fred Andrew Stone was an American actor. Stone began his career as a performer in circuses and minstrel shows, went on to act in vaudeville, and became a star on Broadway and in feature films, which earned him a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
American Fairy Tales is the title of a collection of twelve fantasy stories by L. Frank Baum, published in 1901 by the George M. Hill Company, the firm that issued The Wonderful Wizard of Oz the previous year. The cover, title page, and page borders were designed by Ralph Fletcher Seymour; each story was furnished with two full-page black-and-white illustrations, by either Harry Kennedy, Ike Morgan, or Norman P. Hall.
"Little Orphant Annie" is an 1885 poem written by James Whitcomb Riley and published by the Bobbs-Merrill Company. First titled "The Elf Child", the name was changed by Riley to "Little Orphant Allie" at its third printing; however, a typesetting error during printing renamed the poem to its current form. Known as the "Hoosier poet", Riley wrote the rhymes in 19th-century Hoosier dialect. As one of his most well known poems, it served as the inspiration for the comic strip Little Orphan Annie, which itself inspired a Broadway musical, several films, and many radio and television programs.
Gaar Campbell Williams was a prominent American cartoonist who worked for the Indianapolis News and the Chicago Tribune. His scenes of horse-and-buggy days in small towns of the Victorian era included situations taken from memories of his childhood in his hometown of Richmond, Indiana. Labeled the "Hoosier Cartoonist" or the "James Whitcomb Riley of the Pencil", his cartoon panels captured the flavor of a bygone era to the degree they were deemed worthy of reprinting in the mid-20th century years after his death.
Veal liver and bacon is a dish containing veal liver and bacon.
Ethel Franklin Betts Bains was an American illustrator primarily of children's books during the golden age of American illustration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Robert Forrest Wilson was an American author and journalist. He won the 1942 Pulitzer Prize for his biography, Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Augusta Stevenson (1869–1976) was a writer of children's literature and a teacher. She was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and wrote more than thirty children's books, her most famous being for the "Childhood of Famous Americans" series and five volumes of "Children's Classics in Dramatic Form."
Bertita Harding was a royal German biographer with an easy and sometimes humorous style that made her a popular author.
Donald Angus Cameron, publicly known by his middle name, was an American book editor and publisher. Cameron scored his first success handling The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer for Indianapolis publisher Bobbs-Merrill Company in 1936. He moved to Little, Brown and Company in 1938.
Miriam Evangeline Mason was an American writer best known for her books for children.
Bobbs-Merrill mss., 1885-1957. Lilly Library, Indiana University.
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