Charles Scribner's Sons

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The Charles Scribner's Sons Building in New York City

Charles Scribner's Sons , also known as Scribner’s or Scribner , is an American publishing house based in New York that publishes works by renowned and well-known authors such as Ernest Hemingway , F. Scott Fitzgerald , Kurt Vonnegut , Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings , Stephen King , Robert A. Heinlein , Thomas Wolfe , George Santayana , John Clellon Holmes and Edith Wharton . The publisher has numerous authors who have received Pulitzer Prizes , National Book Awards, and other awards. The publishing house also published Scribner's Magazine for many years .

In 1978 the publishing house merged with Atheneum and then operated under the name The Scribner Book Companies. This company in turn was converted into Macmillan in 1984 after further acquisitions .

Simon & Schuster bought Macmillan in 1994. The original company name Charles Scribner's Sons was shortened to Scribner and was only used for individual parts of the publishing program at that time.

history

The publishing house was founded in 1846 by Charles Scribner and Isaac D. Baker as Baker & Scribner . After Baker's death, Charles Scribner bought his shares and renamed the company the Charles Scribner Company . In 1865, the publishing house first published a magazine called Hours at Home .

In 1870, Scribner founded another subsidiary, Scribner and Company, which published a magazine called Scribner's Monthly . After the company's founder died in 1871, his son John Blair Scribner took over the company. Charles Scribner's other two sons, Charles Scribner II and Arthur Hawley Scribner entered in 1875 and 1884, respectively. Both would later manage the company. After other minority shareholders sold their shares to the brothers, the company was renamed Charles Scribner's Sons.

From 1873 Scribner's also published a children's magazine. Mary Mapes Dodge was the managing editor and Frank R. Stockton assisted her. In 1881 the Scribner family initially sold all parts of the company that were engaged in the publication of magazines. At the same time, the company undertook not to publish any further magazines or journals for a period of five years. When this blocking period expired, they began to publish Scribner's Magazine . The company's headquarters were in the Scribner Building from 1893 , and later the Charles Scribner's Sons Building . Both buildings in Manhattan were designed by the architect Ernest Flagg in the style of Beaux Arts architecture .

Maxwell Perkins

The fact that Scribner's has developed into an important publishing house on the American literary scene is also thanks to its editor Maxwell Perkins . Fitzgerald expert Matthew J. Bruccoli called Perkins the only lecturer in the history of American literature known to most American studies students. Perkins was hired as an editor in 1910. At the time Perkins joined the publishing house, Scribner's was best known for its publications by respected and established US authors such as John Galsworthy , Henry James and Edith Wharton . Although Perkins appreciated these classics of American literature, he was keen to discover new talents. His first great discovery was F. Scott Fitzgerald. Perkins had expressed interest in Fitzgerald's first novel manuscript, The Romantic Egotist , but had to reject both the first draft in August 1918 and the revised version in October 1918, based on his suggestions. Perkins, however, succeeded in publishing his colleagues from the third version, the title Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise ( This Side of Paradise to convince) had changed, and in September 1919, the novel by Scribner's was accepted. This side of paradise has been very well received by literary critics, and Fitzgerald's biographer Scott Donaldson describes the sales success as remarkable by any measure. The portrait of the young generation after the end of the First World War and in particular the flappers and their emancipated way of life made the 23-year-old Fitzgerald famous overnight. The publication of the novel also marked the growth of a new generation of writers whose names were associated with Perkins.

Perkins was also the editor of Fitzgerald's third novel, The Great Gatsby , which is now classified as one of the greatest works of American modernism . Through Fitzgerald, Perkins also met the young Ernest Hemingway and published his first great novel The Sun Also Rises in 1926 . With its sometimes coarse language, this novel was a bold book at the time and Perkins had to work hard for this work within his publishing house. The commercial success of Hemingway's next novel In Another Country (1929), which turned out to be a huge hit , strengthened Perkins' position as a lecturer within Scribner.

Perkins also edited Thomas Wolfe's work . He was the first to publish JP Marquand and Erskine Caldwell ( Tobacco Road (1932), God's Little Acre (1933)). He was also responsible for the great success of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings , whose first novel The Yearling (1938) was based on suggestions from Perkins. The novel became an instant bestseller and won the Pulitzer Prize . Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country (1946) was another novel discovered by Perkins. The penultimate discovery in his life was the author James Jones , who approached Perkins in 1945. Perkins persuaded Jones to stop working on the novel he was working on and encouraged him to begin work on the work, which appeared in 1951 under the title From Here to Eternity . Perkins' health was already in bad shape by this point and he saw neither that success nor the success of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea (1952), which was dedicated to him. Perkin's last literary discovery was Marguerite Young , who began her monumental work Miss MacIntosh, My Darling with his encouragement in 1947. He had only signed a contract with her on the basis of a 40-page draft novel. The novel was finally published in 1965.

The publishing division that published children's books was founded in 1934 and was directed by Alice Dalgliesh . This part of the publishing house also published works by well-known authors and draftsmen. These include NC Wyeth , Robert A. Heinlein , Marcia Brown , Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and Leo Politi , among others .

The publishing house has been owned by CBS Corporation since 2011 .

Head of the company

The Scribner Building in New York City

Company names

  • Baker & Scribner (used until co-founder Baker's death in 1850),
  • Charles Scribner Company
  • Charles Scribner's Sons
  • Scribner

literature

  • Ruth Prigozy (Ed.): The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2002, ISBN 0-521-62474-6 .

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Matthew Bruccoli [2004]: The Sons of Maxwell Perkins: Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and Their editor . University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, South Carolina 2004, ISBN 978-0-224-61721-5 , p. Xvii: "Maxwell Perkins (1884-1947) is the only literary editor of whom students of American literature and most of their teachers have heard. "
  2. ↑ Prigozy: The Cambridge dance companies to F. Scott Fitzgerald . 2002, p. XVIII
  3. ^ Scott Donaldson: Fitzgerald's nonfiction in Pregozy (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to F. Scott Fitzgerald . 2002, p. 165. The original quote is: By any standard, the sales of “This Side of Paradise” was remarkable. Its portrayal of the younger generation, and particularly of the flappet and her liberated ways, made the twenty-three-year-old famous overnight.
  4. ↑ Perkins, Maxwell Evarts; Baughman, Judith, The sons of Maxwell Perkins: letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, and their editor , University of South Carolina Press, 2004. Cf. p. xxvii
  5. ^ Columbia Journalism Review - CJR's guide to what the major media companies own . Retrieved November 28, 2011.
  6. ^ Charles Scribner (PDF). In: The New York Times , August 28, 1871. Retrieved July 24, 2008. “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 ... " 
  7. ↑ Charles Scribner Dies suddenly at 76. Publisher Succumbs to Heart Disease at Home Here. What at Desk Thursday. Entered Firm as Youth. Directed Business His Father Founded. Fostered Work of American Authors. Firm Founded in 1846. Received Honorary Degree. . In: The New York Times , April 20, 1930. Retrieved July 24, 2008. “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 ... " 
  8. ↑ Eric Pace: Charles Scribner Jr., Who Headed Publishing Company, Dies at 74 . In: The New York Times , November 13, 1995. Retrieved July 24, 2008. "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. " 
  9. ^ Herbert S. Bailey, Jr .: Charles Scribner, Jr. (July 13, 1921- November 11, 1995) . In: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 141, No. 2 (Ed.): Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society . 141, No. 2, 1997, pp. 233-237. JSTOR 987306 .


Coordinates: 40 ° 45 ′ 27 ″  N , 73 ° 58 ′ 40 ″  W.