| Parent company | Penguin Young Readers Group (Penguin Group) |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1898; 127 years ago (1898) |
| Founders | Alexander Grosset, George T. Dunlap |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | 345Hudson Street, 14th floor,New York City |
| Publication types | Books |
| Fiction genres | Photoplay editions,children's literature,mystery fiction |
| Imprints | Platt & Munk Charter Books (Ace Charter) Bedtime Stories Junior Library |
| Official website | www |
Grosset & Dunlap is aNew York City-based publishing house founded in 1898.
The company was purchased byG. P. Putnam's Sons in 1982[1] and today is part ofPenguin Random House through its subsidiaryPenguin Group.[2]
In recent years, through thePenguin Group, they have published approximately 170 titles a year, including licensed children's books for such properties asMiss Spider,Strawberry Shortcake,Super Why!,Charlie and Lola,Nova the Robot,Weebles,Bratz,The Wiggles,Sonic X, andAtomic Betty. Grosset & Dunlap also publishesDick and Jane children's books and, through Platt & Munk,The Little Engine That Could.
The company was founded in 1898 by Alexander Grosset and George T. Dunlap. It was originally primarily a hardcover reprint house. In 1907, Grosset & Dunlap acquired Chatterton & Peck, who had a large children's list including theStratemeyer Syndicate.[3]
Grosset & Dunlap is historically known for itsphotoplay editions and juvenile series books such as theHardy Boys,Nancy Drew,The Bobbsey Twins,Tom Swift,Cherry Ames and other books from their long partnership with theStratemeyer Syndicate (currently owned bySimon & Schuster).
After George T. Dunlap retired in 1944, Grosset & Dunlap was sold to a consortium ofRandom House;Little, Brown;Harper and Brothers;Scribners; and theBook-of-the-Month Club.[3] Grosset & Dunlap launched the paperback reprint houseBantam Books in 1945 in cooperation withCurtis Publishing Company.[4] In 1954, Grosset & Dunlap acquiredMcLoughlin Brothers.[5] Grosset & Dunlap had aninitial public offering in 1961, by which time the majority of the books published were children's books.[6] In 1964, Grosset & Dunlap acquired full ownership of Bantam from Curtis.[7]
Grosset & Dunlap obtained permission fromLittle, Brown, to reprintThornton Burgess's many children's books, and began issuing the Bedtime Stories series (20 books originally published 1913–1919, including such titles asThe Adventures of Reddy Fox andThe Adventures of Chatterer the Red Squirrel) in 1949. The original Little, Brown editions had plates of high quality paper for the illustrations, but the Grosset & Dunlap editions were to print the illustrations on the same stock as the text. They commissioned the original artist,Harrison Cady, to recreate the illustrations as line drawings appropriate for that type of paper, and to create many additional illustrations. Where the original Little, Brown editions had six full-page illustrations, the Grosset & Dunlap had 14 (fourteen) full-page drawings, plus many smaller drawings placed throughout the text. Cady had matured as an artist in the decades since the original Little, Brown illustrations. The line drawings he did for Grosset & Dunlap are simpler than the illustrations he had made for Little, Brown, and are generally more charming. The original Little, Brown illustrations better convey Cady's remarkable vision for Burgess' creatures.[8]
Grosset & Dunlap published the Burgess books as hardcovers with dust jackets from 1949 to 1957, then as pink hardcovers without dust jackets from about 1962 into the 1970s. They issued them with library bindings in 1977. In most cases, the latest date printed anywhere in the book was from the early 1940s, so the Grosset & Dunlap editions are today often mistaken for being older than they are. In the 1980s, Little, Brown, owned by Penguin, canceled their permission for Grosset & Dunlap to publish the Burgess books. For most of the titles, the Harrison Cady illustrations commissioned by Grosset & Dunlap have never been published since then. An exception is the 2000 Dover edition ofThe Adventures of Paddy the Beaver, which has all of them (the illustrations in most of the Dover editions are not the Grosset & Dunlap commissions).[8]
In 1968, Grosset & Dunlap was acquired by conglomerateNational General, run byGene Klein.[9] National General was acquired byAmerican Financial Group in 1973.[10]
In the 1970s and 1980s, the company'sCharter Books (also known as Ace Charter)imprint published mystery fiction, most notably theLeslie Charteris series,The Saint.
In 1974, film and television companyFilmways bought the company fromAmerican Financial Group (Bantam was sold separately).[11] During this time, Grosset & Dunlap acquired a new paperback publisher,Ace Books. Filmways sold Grosset & Dunlap toG. P. Putnam's Sons whenOrion Pictures acquired Filmways in 1982.[1][12]
In 1978, the company drew a great deal of attention with its publication ofRN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. The preparation of the book was alluded to briefly in the 2008 Oscar-nominated filmFrost/Nixon, which chronicled and dramatized a series of interviews with the ex-president conducted by British television personalityDavid Frost. Shortly after the aforementioned interviews aired to great publicity, thecopy editor whom Grosset & Dunlap sent toSan Clemente to work on the book with Nixon's staff was named as David Frost.
Grosset & Dunlap also published a series of literary classics which they called the Illustrated Junior Library. This series, published with colorful illustrations, included such titles asHeidi, an expurgated edition ofGulliver's Travels,Swiss Family Robinson,The Boy's King Arthur (published under the titleKing Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table), andThe Wonderful Wizard of Oz (a 1956 reprinting of the 1944 edition with new illustrations byEvelyn Copelman, and published under the titleThe Wizard of Oz).
Putnam merged withPenguin Group in 1996[13] In 2013, Penguin merged withBertelsmann'sRandom House, formingPenguin Random House.[14]
Today, Grosset & Dunlap's new juvenile series includeDish,Camp Confidential,Flirt,Katie Kazoo,Dragon Slayers' Academy, andHenry Winkler andLin Oliver'sHank Zipzer series.
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