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| Parent company | Penguin Random House |
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| Status | Active |
| Founded | 1925; 100 years ago (1925) |
| Founders | Harold K. Guinzburg George Oppenheimer |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | New York City |
| Key people | Brian Tart (president) Kenneth Wright (Children's publisher) |
| Imprints |
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| Official website | penguin.com/vikingbooks |
Viking Press (formallyViking Penguin, also listed asViking Books) is an Americanpublishing company owned byPenguin Random House. It was founded inNew York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheimer[1] and then acquired by thePenguin Group in 1975.[2][3]
The publisher's name and logo, a Viking ship drawn byRockwell Kent, were chosen as symbols of enterprise, adventure, and exploration in publishing.[citation needed]
Viking Press was sold to Penguin Books in 1975 for $12 million due to the publishing house's monetary difficulties. These were speculated to have been caused by the shrinkage in the juvenile market and Viking Press' lack of a textbook division.[3]
In 1933, Viking Press founded a department called Junior Books to publish children's books. The first book published wasThe Story About Ping in 1933 under editorMay Massee. Junior Books was later renamed Viking Children's Books. Viking Kestrel was one of itsimprints.
Its books have won theNewbery andCaldecott Medals, and include such books asThe Twenty-One Balloons, written and illustrated byWilliam Pene du Bois (1947, Newbery medal winner for 1948),Corduroy,Make Way for Ducklings,The Stinky Cheese Man byJon Scieszka andLane Smith (1993),The Outsiders,Pippi Longstocking, andThe Story of Ferdinand. Its paperbacks are now published byPuffin Books, which includes the Speak andFirebird imprints. In 2023, Tamar Brazis was named v-p and publisher of Viking Children's Books.[4]
TheViking Critical Library offers academic editions ofliterary texts. LikeW. W. Norton'sNorton Critical Editions, all titles print the text alongside a selection of critical essays and contextual documents (including relevant extracts from the author's oeuvre). The series, which only saw sporadic publications in the late 1970s and late 1990s, has been dormant since 1998, with no new titles released since then. However, a number of existing titles remain in print.
| Author | Title | Editor | Year published | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Don DeLillo | White Noise | Mark Osteen | 1998 | . |
| Graham Greene | The Quiet American | John Clark Pratt | 1996 | |
| James Joyce | Dubliners | Robert Scholes | 1996 | |
| James Joyce | Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | Chester G. Anderson | 1977 | The only title known to include explanatory end notes. |
| Ken Kesey | One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | John Clark Pratt | 1977 | Out of print. |
| Jack Kerouac | On the Road | Scott Donaldson | 1979 | Out of print. |
| Arthur Miller | The Crucible | Gerald Weales | 1996 | |
| Arthur Miller | Death of a Salesman | Gerald Weales | 1996 | |
| John Steinbeck | The Grapes of Wrath | Kevin Hearle | 1997 |
| Bertelsmann Home Entertainment |
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