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CliffsNotes are a series of studentstudy guides. The guides present and create literary and other works inpamphlet form or online. Detractors of the study guides claim they let students bypass reading the assigned literature. The company claims to promote the reading of the original work and does not view the study guides as a substitute for that reading.[1]
CliffsNotes was started byNebraska nativeClifton Hillegass in 1958.[2] He was working atNebraska Book Company of Lincoln, Nebraska, when he met Jack Cole, the co-owner ofColes, a Toronto book business. Coles published a series of Canadian study guides calledColes Notes, and sold Hillegass the U.S. rights to the guides.[3]
Hillegass and his wife, Catherine, started the business in their basement at 511 Eastridge Drive in Lincoln, with sixteenWilliam Shakespeare titles. In August 1958, they shipped their first batch of notes and by the end of that year had sold over 58,000 copies. Hillegass hired literature teachers to condense works of literature into concise summaries, commentaries, author biographies and character analyses.In the 1960s, as his own writers revised the summaries of Shakespearian plays, Hillegass eliminated the Cole's Notes versions.[3]
By 1964, sales reached one million Notes annually. CliffsNotes now exist for hundreds of works. The term "Cliff's Notes" has become aproprietary eponym for similar products.
IDG Books purchased CliffsNotes in 1998 for $14.2 million.John Wiley & Sons acquired IDG Books (renamed Hungry Minds) in 2001. In 2011, CliffsNotes announced a joint venture withMark Burnett, a TV producer, to create a series of 60-second videostudy guides of literary works.[4] In 2012, CliffsNotes was acquired byHoughton Mifflin Harcourt.[1] In 2021, CliffsNotes was acquired byCourse Hero.[5]
