Publication types Books Founded 1897 Acquisition date 1998 | Founder Frank Nelson Doubleday Country of origin United States of America | |
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Parent company Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (Random House) Official website doubleday.knopfdoubleday.com Headquarters location New York City, New York, United States Parent organizations Random House, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group | ||
Doubleday is an American publishing company founded as Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897 that by 1947 was the largest in the United States. It published the work of mostly U.S. authors under a number of imprints and distributed them through its own stores. In 2009 Doubleday was merged with Knopf Publishing Group to form the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Contents
Doubleday publisher
History
The firm was founded as Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897 by Frank Nelson Doubleday, who had formed a partnership with the magazine publisher Samuel McClure. One of their first bestsellers was The Day's Work by Rudyard Kipling. Other authors published by the company in its early years include W. Somerset Maugham and Joseph Conrad. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. later served as a vice-president of the company.
In 1900, the company became Doubleday, Page & Company when Walter Hines Page joined as a new partner. In 1922, the founder's son, Nelson Doubleday, joined the firm.
In 1910, Doubleday, Page, and Co. moved its operations, which include a train station, to Garden City. The Doubleday company purchased much of the land on the west side of Franklin Avenue, and estate homes were built for many of its executives on Fourth Street. In 1916, company co-founder and Garden City resident Walter Hines Page was named Ambassador to Great Britain.
In 1927, Doubleday merged with the George H. Doran Company, creating Doubleday, Doran, then the largest publishing business in the English-speaking world. In 1946, the company became Doubleday and Company. Nelson Doubleday, Jr. resigned as president, but continued as chairman of the board until his death on January 11, 1949. Douglas Black took over and was president from 1946 to 1963.
By 1947, Doubleday was the largest publisher in the US, with annual sales of over 30 million books.
Doubleday's son-in-law John Sargent was president and CEO from 1963 to 1978; Nelson Doubleday, Jr. succeeded John Sargent as President and CEO from 1978 to 1985, and James R. McLaughlin then succeeded Doubleday in both roles, Doubleday becoming Chairman of the Board.
In 1980, the company bought the New York Mets baseball team. It defeated the Boston Red Sox to win the World Series in 1986 in a classic 7-game contest.
In 1986 the firm was a fully integrated international communications company, doing trade publishing, mass-market paperback publishing, book clubs, and book manufacturing, together with ventures in broadcasting and advertising. The company had offices in London and Paris and wholly owned subsidiaries in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with joint ventures in the UK and the Netherlands.
Doubleday sold the publishing company to Bertelsmann in 1986, and teamed up with minority owner Fred Wilpon to buy the Mets in his own name. In 1988, portions of the firm became part of the Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, which in turn became a division of Random House in 1998.
In late 2008 and early 2009, the Doubleday imprint was merged with Knopf Publishing Group to form the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Presidents
Notable editors
Notable employees
Imprints
The following are imprints that exist or have existed under Doubleday: