E. P. Dutton

Last updated

E. P. Dutton
Epdutton.png
Parent company Penguin Group (Penguin Random House)
Founded Boston, Massachusetts (1852 (1852))
FounderEdward Payson Dutton
Country of originUnited States
Headquarters locationNew York City
Publication typesBooks
Official website penguin.com

E. P. Dutton was an American book publishing company. It was founded as a book retailer in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1852 [1] by Edward Payson Dutton. Since 1986, it has been an imprint of Penguin Group.

Contents

Creator

Edward Payson Dutton Edward Payson Dutton.jpg
Edward Payson Dutton

Edward Payson Dutton (January 1, 1831 in Keene, New Hampshire [2] – 1923) was a prominent American book publisher.

In 1852, Dutton founded the E. P. Dutton bookselling company in Boston, Massachusetts. The business sold fiction and non-fiction, and within a short time expanded into the selling of children's literature. In 1864, he opened a branch office to sell books in New York City and in 1869 moved his company's headquarters there and entered the book publishing business. From 1888 onward, he started working with Ernest Nister. In 1906, Dutton struck what proved to be a significant deal with the English publishing company of J. M. Dent to be the American distributor of the Everyman's Library series of classic literature reprints.

Edward Dutton died in 1923, aged 92, but his company continued to flourish and today is an imprint of the Penguin Group.

History

Dutton expanded to New York City in 1864, where it began publishing religious books. In 1906, Dutton made a deal with English publishing company J. M. Dent to be the American distributor of the Everyman's Library series of classic literature reprints.

John Macrae joined the company in 1885 as an office boy, and in 1923 was named president. In 1928, the publishing and retail divisions were split into two separate businesses with Macrae acquiring the publishing side, operating as E. P. Dutton and Company, Inc.

It published children's books under the Unicorn imprint, with some books published in the 1990s. Dutton Children's Books continues today.

In 1975, Dutton was acquired by the Dutch publisher Elsevier. [3] The following year, Dutton bought Hawthorn Books from W. H. Allen & Co. [4] Dutton lost money under Dutch ownership, and the company was sold to the buyout firm Dyson-Kissner-Moran in 1981. The paperback publisher New American Library acquired Dutton in 1985. [5]

New American Library was acquired by Penguin Group in 1986, and split into two imprints: Dutton and Dutton Children's Books. [6] Dutton is now a boutique imprint within Penguin Group, publishing approximately 40 books for adults per year, half of them fiction and half non-fiction. After the acquisition by Penguin, books to which Penguin acquired the rights as part of the acquisition of Dutton were published in paperback under the imprint Puffin Unicorn (because Puffin has been the longtime paperback imprint for the Penguin Group). Penguin merged with Random House to form Penguin Random House in 2013.

In 2017, sister imprint Blue Rider Press was closed and its books were moved to Dutton. [7]

Book series

Related Research Articles

Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. It has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the Germany-based media conglomerate Bertelsmann.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Penguin Books</span> British publishing house

Penguin Books Limited is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other stores for sixpence, bringing high-quality fiction and non-fiction to the mass market. Its success showed that large audiences existed for serious books. It also affected modern British popular culture significantly through its books concerning politics, the arts, and science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Everyman's Library</span> Reprint series of Random House

Everyman's Library is a series of reprints of classic literature, primarily from the Western canon. It begun in 1906. It is currently published in hardback by Random House. It was originally an imprint of J. M. Dent, who continue to publish Everyman Paperbacks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hutchinson Heinemann</span> British book and magazine publisher

Hutchinson Heinemann is a British publishing firm founded in 1887. It is currently an imprint which is ultimately owned by Bertelsmann, the German publishing conglomerate.

Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a merger that was finalised on 1 July 2013, with Bertelsmann initially owning 53% of the joint venture, and Pearson PLC initially owning the remaining 47%. Since 18 December 2019, Penguin Random House has been wholly owned by Bertelsmann.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Berkley Books</span> Publishing imprint of Penguin Group (USA)

Berkley Books is now an imprint of the Penguin Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simon & Schuster</span> American publishing company

Simon & Schuster LLC is an American publishing company owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster is considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers. As of 2017 Simon & Schuster was the third largest publisher in the United States, publishing 2,000 titles annually under 35 different imprints.

Donna Jo Napoli is an American writer of children's and young adult fiction, as well as a linguist. She currently is a professor at Swarthmore College teaching Linguistics in all different forms .She has also taught linguistics at Smith College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Georgetown University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the University of Pennsylvania,

Grosset & Dunlap is a New York City-based publishing house founded in 1898.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">New American Library</span> American publisher

The New American Library is an American publisher based in New York, founded in 1948. Its initial focus was affordable paperback reprints of classics and scholarly works as well as popular and pulp fiction, but it now publishes trade and hardcover titles. It is currently an imprint of Penguin Random House; it was announced in 2015 that the imprint would publish only nonfiction titles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">G. P. Putnam's Sons</span> US book publisher

G. P. Putnam's Sons is an American book publisher based in New York City, New York. Since 1996, it has been an imprint of the Penguin Group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hamish Hamilton</span> British book publishing house and Penguin Group imprint

Hamish Hamilton Limited was a British book publishing house, founded in 1931 eponymously by the half-Scot half-American Jamie Hamilton. Jamie Hamilton was often referred to as Hamish Hamilton.

David McKay Publications was an American book publisher which also published some of the first comic books, including the long-running titles Ace Comics, King Comics, and Magic Comics; as well as collections of such popular comic strips as Blondie, Dick Tracy, and Mandrake the Magician. McKay was also the publisher of the Fodor's travel guides.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dial Press</span> American publishing company

The Dial Press was a publishing house founded in 1923 by Lincoln MacVeagh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dell Publishing</span> American publisher

Dell Publishing Company, Inc. is an American publisher of books, magazines and comic books, that was founded in 1921 by George T. Delacorte Jr. with $10,000, two employees and one magazine title, I Confess, and soon began turning out dozens of pulp magazines, which included penny-a-word detective stories, articles about films, and romance books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Henry Holt and Company</span> American book-publishing company

Henry Holt and Company is an American book-publishing company based in New York City. One of the oldest publishers in the United States, it was founded in 1866 by Henry Holt and Frederick Leypoldt. The company publishes in the fields of American and international fiction, biography, history, politics, science, psychology, health, and children's literature. In the U.S., it operates under Macmillan Publishers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weidenfeld & Nicolson</span> British publisher

Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd, often shortened to W&N or Weidenfeld, is a British publisher of fiction and reference books. It has been a division of the French-owned Orion Publishing Group since 1991.

William Collins, Sons & Co., often referred to as Collins, was a Scottish printing and publishing company founded by a Presbyterian schoolmaster, William Collins, in Glasgow in 1819, in partnership with Charles Chalmers, the younger brother of Thomas Chalmers, the minister of Tron Church in Glasgow.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Penguin Random House</span> American multinational conglomerate publishing company

Penguin Random House LLC is an Anglo-American multinational conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, with the merger of Penguin Books and Random House. Penguin Books was originally founded in 1935 and Random House was founded in 1927. It has more than 300 publishing imprints. Along with Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins and Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Random House is considered one of the 'Big Five' English language publishers.

Studio Vista was a British publishing company founded in 1961 that specialised in leisure and design topics. In the 1960s, the firm published works by a number of authors who went on to be noted designers.

References

  1. "E. P. Dutton Marks its 100th Birthday; Book Concern Starts Second Century Today by Publishing Literary History Volume". The New York Times . January 4, 1952.
  2. DUTTON, Edward Payson; p. 330; in Who's Who in America (1901–1902 edition); via archive.org
  3. "Elsevier Reaches Dutton Merger Accord". The New York Times. April 12, 1975. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved January 20, 2018.
  4. Tebbel, John William (1972). A history of book publishing in the United States. New York: R. R. Bowker Co. pp. 318–319. ISBN   9780835204897 . Retrieved December 22, 2019.
  5. McDOWELL, EDWIN (February 7, 1985). "E.P. Dutton to Be Purchased by New American Library". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved January 20, 2018.
  6. McDowell, Edwin (October 1986). "PENGUIN AGREES TO BUY NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY". The New York Times. Retrieved December 2, 2018.
  7. PRH Closing the Blue Rider Imprint
  8. Dutton Paperbacks (E. P. Dutton) – Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved April 19, 2018.
  9. Collecting Everyman's Library (1906–78), everymanslibrarycollecting.com. Retrieved April 19, 2018.
  10. "Sunrise Book" + Dutton, worldcat.org. Retrieved August 27, 2023.
  11. Unicorn Books (E. P. Dutton) – Book Series List, publishing history.com. Retrieved May 24, 2018.
  12. Appelbaum, Judith (June 12, 1983). "PAPERBACK TALK; Revivals: Plans and Progress". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved June 5, 2021.
  13. Studio Vista | Dutton Picturebacks – Book Series List, publishinghistory.com. Retrieved August 27, 2023.
  14. Modern Sculpture (Studio Vista / Dutton Pictureback) by Alan Bowness, goodreads.com. Retrieved August 27, 2023.

Further reading