Frank Nelson Doubleday

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Frank Nelson Doubleday

Frank Nelson Doubleday (born January 8, 1862 in Brooklyn , New York , † January 30, 1934 ) was an American publisher .

Doubleday was the son of hatter William Edwards Doubleday and Ellen M. Dickinson. He first attended a public elementary school in Brooklyn, then attended the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute for two or three years. After the business failure of his father, he started in 1877 at the Charles Scribner's Sons publishing house in New York, where he worked his way up to be responsible for “ Scribner's Magazine ” and later to be responsible for the publisher's subscriptions. In that capacity, he began rewarding customers for annual subscription to the magazine with books, originally a series of Rudyard Kipling's novels . On November 30, 1895, Doubleday visited Kipling for the first time in Vermont .

In 1897 he left Scribner's and initially founded the Doubleday & McClure Company with Samuel McClure as a partner . McClure was the editor of McClure's Magazine , a monthly magazine with political and literary content. Texts by Rudyard Kipling , Robert Louis Stevenson , Jack London , Herminie T. Kavanagh , Willa Cather , Arthur Conan Doyle , Antony Hope and Mark Twain appeared in it - as was also syndicated in other newspapers . a. but also novels in sequels.

While tensions arose and increased in the collaboration with McClure and the business relationship was broken again on December 31, 1899, Doubleday and Rudyard Kipling remained lifelong and was called Doubleday by Kipling - referring to the initials FND - " Effendi ".

January 1st, 1900 marks the beginning of the collaboration between Doubleday and Walter Hines Page , a social reformer and the publisher of " The Atlantic Monthly " and thus their joint, new publisher "Doubleday, Page and Company". Their collaboration was to last until 1913; Page was, after all, US ambassador to London during the First World War.

In 1921 Doubleday acquired control of the British publisher William Heinemann , in 1927 the George H. Doran Company ; the resulting publishing house was renamed "Doubleday, Doran and Company" - and was at that time the largest publishing house in the English-speaking world. 

In 1886 Doubleday married Neltje DeGraff . From this marriage came the son Nelson and a daughter. The couple also adopted a Doubledays nephew named Felix.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Princeton University Library: Frank N. Doubleday and Nelson Doubleday Collection, Biography of Frank N. Doubleday and Nelson Doubleday ( Memento of the original from June 23, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / diglib.princeton.edu
  2. ^ "The Committee of Ways and Means", Notes on the text
  3. ^ Making the Bestseller List - Publishers and Publishing: A Case Study; University of Virginia (with a picture "Effendis")
personal data
SURNAME Doubleday, Frank Nelson
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American publisher
DATE OF BIRTH January 8, 1862
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , New York , USA
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 1934