| Parent company | Arcadia Publishing |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1926 |
| Founder | John McClure |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | Elmwood, Louisiana |
| Distribution | United States and worldwide |
| Key people | Stuart Omer Landry,Hodding Carter, Milburn Calhoun |
| Publication types | books |
| Nonfiction topics | history,travel guides,art,architecture,children's books,textbooks,Louisiana |
| Official website | pelicanpub |
Pelican Publishing Company is a book publisher based inElmwood, Louisiana, with aNew Orleans postal address.[1] It was acquired in 2019 byArcadia Publishing, a leading publisher of local and regional content in theUnited States.[2]
Pelican publishes approximately 60 titles per year and maintains a backlist of over 2,500 books.[3] Most of its titles relate toLouisiana andSouthern culture,cuisine, art, travel guides,history, children's books, and textbooks.
Founded in 1926 by John McClure, Pelican's early history was tied toWilliam Faulkner. Its roots were in the Pelican Bookshop onRoyal Street, a hangout for New Orleans' literary circle of the time, which included Faulkner,Sherwood Anderson,Caroline Durieux,Grace King, andLyle Saxon.[4]
Its first release wasSherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles: A Gallery of Contemporary New Orleans, a book of illustrations by William Spratling with captions and a foreword by Faulkner. Spratling and Faulkner were roommates in a building just offJackson Square.[5][6][7] The book was a play on the Mexican cartoonistMiguel Covarrubias'The Prince of Wales and Other Famous Americans, published the previous year; just as thePrince of Wales was not an American,Sherwood Anderson was not aCreole.
In early 1927, Pelican was acquired by Stuart Omer Landry, who owned the publisher until his death in 1966.[8][9] Landry, who was born on his father's Alma plantation nearThibodaux, worked in advertising and was a founding board member of theMetairie Park Country Day School.[10] Landry was anti-New Deal and a racial conservative, and under him, Pelican published many books advocatingwhite supremacist andsegregationist positions, including his ownThe Cult of Equality: A Study of the Race Problem (1945),The Battle of Liberty Place: The Overthrow of Carpet-bag Rule in New Orleans, September 14, 1874 (1955) (a defense of theWhite League and theKu Klux Klan), andRebuilding the Tower of Babel: A Study of Christianity and Segregation (1957).[11][12][13][14]
The African-American newspaper theCalifornia Eagle called Landry "an old-line Southerner of the traditional Keep-the-Negro-in-Place School."[15] Landry also published the first edition of theLouisiana Almanac in 1949.[16] Historian Lawrence N. Powell described Landry'sBattle of Liberty Place as "propaganda, using history to defend segregation and a racial status quo."[17]
After Landry's death, Pelican was bought in 1967 byHodding Carter, thePulitzer Prize-winning progressive journalist.[18] He renamed the publisher to Pelican Publishing House, but his ownership lasted only three years. In 1970, Carter sold Pelican to brothers Milburn and James L. Calhoun, natives ofWest Monroe in north Louisiana.[19] Milburn, who became Pelican's publisher and president, was a physician in New Orleans; James, who would be Pelican's senior editor, did public relations work forLouisiana State University. The brothers already owned a similar publisher, Bayou Books of New Orleans.[20] The brothers were, like Landry, conservative; among the first books issued under their ownership wasThe RealSpiro Agnew: Commonsense Quotations of a Household Word, edited by James Calhoun.[21]
By 1998, the headquarters was in suburbanGretna, where a 1998 fire at the publisher's offices and warehouse did an estimated $2 million in damage.[22]
Along with works of local history and other mainstream nonfiction, the Calhouns also turned Pelican into what has been called "the central publishing house of theNeo-Confederate movement," including books that helped "found the modern neo-Confederate movement."[17][23] Among the titles it published wereWas Jefferson Davis Right?,[24] and other similar work.
These books argue that "the Confederacy was the true moral victor in the Civil War...the Civil War was not fought over slavery," and "that the South should separate from the North all over again and form its own country."[25]
In a 2001 interview with the local weeklyGambit, Milburn Calhoun endorsed secession from the United States ("Oh, we would be much better off that way"), said Southern slaveowners "took care of our slaves because they had value," and that "Racism is not hate based on skin color...There are people who devoutly hate Southerners. That’s racism. The most widespread hatred of today is against practicing Christians."[25][26] The neo-Confederate books Pelican published were consistently among its biggest sellers.[26]
Milburn Calhoun died in 2012, after which his daughter Kathleen Calhoun Nettleton became publisher and president.[27][28] James L. Calhoun died in 2019. During their ownership, Pelican's catalog had grown from 22 books to more than 2,000.[29]
In 2019,Arcadia Publishing bought a majority interest in the company.[30] A majority of Pelican's past titles were acquired in the transaction and are now published under the Pelican imprint of Arcadia. Pelican Publishing Company, still owned by the family of Nettleton (who died in 2021[31]), retains rights on the remainder.[32]
In 2020, Arcadia Publishing acquired River Road Press, another publisher of books about New Orleans, Louisiana, and the surrounding region. Scott Campbell, River Road's founder, was named publisher of Pelican Publishing and the two company's catalogs were merged.[33]
For a period beginning circa 2020, the headquarters was in New Orleans proper.[34] Later that year, it moved to its current location.[35]
Noteworthy titles from Pelican Publishing including:
Pelican Publishing 990 N. Corporate Dr., Suite 100 New Orleans, LA 70123- The address states "New Orleans, LA" but the physical location isin the Elmwood CDP.The directions to a particular intersection refer to an earlier headquarters location in New Orleans proper, and does not reflect the latest update.
Pelican Publishing 400 Poydras Street, Suite 900 New Orleans, LA 70130
Our new address is: Pelican Publishing 990 N. Corporate Dr., Suite 100 New Orleans, LA 70123
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