D. Appleton & Company

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  D. Appleton & Company began inside a general store, where founder Daniel Appleton stocked books alongside his other goods. That sideline eventually grew into a publishing house. Its catalog would stretch across science, medicine, reference works, and American fiction. How did a shopkeeper's small side business reach into every corner of the printed word? What specialties set its lists apart from other publishers of the era? And what finally closed the company's long run under its own name?

• 2. A Family Enterprise

  ›

  In 1813 the Appleton family moved from Haverhill to Boston. There they began importing books from England. Twelve years later, in 1825, they moved again, this time to New York City. Daniel Appleton entered the book trade there with his brother-in-law, Jonathan Leavitt. Their first title, Crumbs from the Master's Table by William Mason, appeared in 1831. Mason himself had lived from 1719 to 1791.

  By 1848 Daniel Appleton had retired from the firm he built. His son William Henry Appleton, who lived from 1814 to 1899, then formed a new partnership. His partners were four brothers: John Adams Appleton, who lived from 1817 to 1881, and George Swett Appleton, from 1821 to 1878. The other two were Daniel Sidney Appleton, from 1824 to 1890, and Samuel Francis Appleton, from 1826 to 1883. Daniel Appleton died the following year, in 1849. Leadership of the company now belonged entirely to his sons.

• 3. Magazines And Subscriptions

  ›

  In 1857 the company became the first New York trade publisher to sell books by subscription. Twelve years later, in 1869, it launched a periodical called Appleton's Journal. By 1881 the firm had moved its offices, from Leonard Street and Broadway to Bond Street in New York City. That same year, Appleton's Journal was renamed Appleton's Magazine. In 1905 the publication took on yet another name, becoming Appleton's Booklovers Magazine. The magazine business kept changing shape even as the company's other departments grew.

• 4. Selling Science

  ›

  Herbert Spencer, John Tyndall, Thomas Huxley, and Charles Darwin all appeared on the Appleton list. Their books were sold at reasonable prices for readers of the day. In 1872 the editor Edward L. Youmans started two ventures at once. One was a magazine, Popular Science Monthly. The other was a book series called the International Scientific Series. The firm kept publishing the scientific work of Charles Darwin, who lived from 1809 to 1882. It also issued a work by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1880. That reputation for serious, affordable science stayed attached to the Appleton name for decades.

• 5. Reference Shelves

  ›

  Appleton's Railroad and Steamboat Guide reached readers in 1847, among the firm's earliest reference titles. A single-volume Appletons' Cyclopaedia of Biography followed in 1856, edited by Francis L. Hawks. Hawks added American subjects to a British volume that Elihu Rich had edited and Richard Griffin & Company of London had published in 1854. A much larger New American Cyclopedia followed, sixteen volumes edited by George Ripley and Charles Anderson Dana between 1857 and 1863. It was later revised and enlarged as the American Cyclopedia between 1873 and 1876.

  An Unabridged English Dictionary appeared in 1859. An Annual Cyclopedia covering the years 1861 to 1901 was published every year. The Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography grew to six volumes by 1887, edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske. Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia followed in 1893, eight volumes edited by Charles Kendall Adams. Its rights had been acquired from Alvin J. Johnson & Co. A twelve-volume Universal Cyclopaedia derived from that work appeared in 1900. It was edited first by Adams and, from 1902, by Rossiter Johnson. Under his editorship it took the expanded title Universal Cyclopaedia and Atlas.

  The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia was published between 1889 and 1891. A follow-up, the New Century Dictionary, ran from 1927 to about 1963. The firm's reach extended just as far into fiction and poetry.

• 6. Names In American Letters

  ›

  The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane was published in 1895. Joel Chandler Harris's Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings followed in 1880. The company also issued the first U.S. edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll in 1865. Progress and Poverty appeared in 1880 as well. Works by Jonathan Edwards, who lived from 1703 to 1758, were reissued in 1834. The Works of Rudyard Kipling appeared in fifteen authorized volumes in 1899. The firm published the literary work of Henry James, who lived from 1843 to 1916. It also published the art-related work of Edith Wharton, who lived from 1862 to 1937. Frank Lebby Stanton's Songs of the Soil appeared in 1894. The Appleton name reached well past fiction and poetry, into memoir, faith, and public affairs.

• 7. Special Departments

  ›

  The Reverend T. DeWitt Talmage's From the Manger to the Throne appeared between 1880 and 1889. The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis was part of the Appleton list as well. So was John Jacob Astor's A Journey in Other Worlds. American Negro Slavery by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips appeared in 1918. Architectural works by Stanford White, who died in 1906, were also part of the catalog. Picturesque America by William Cullen Bryant was published in 1872. Gems of British Art came out in 1857.

  Medical books formed a department of their own. Dr. Robert Hall Babcock's Diseases of the Heart and Arterial System appeared in 1903. His Diseases of the Lungs followed in 1907. Books in the Spanish language for the South American market were another specialty, including the works of Rafael Pombo. In 1875 the firm published the memoirs of General William Tecumseh Sherman, who lived from 1820 to 1891. That was one of the first such memoirs by a Civil War general to reach print. Within a generation, though, ownership of the firm itself would change hands more than once.

• 8. Consolidation And Merger

  ›

  In 1890 D. Appleton & Company became one of the founding members of a new conglomerate, the American Book Company. In 1900 the firm filed for bankruptcy and sold Popular Science. Joseph H. Sears of Harper's then reorganized the company. J. W. Hiltman became president in 1919. In 1924 the company purchased Stewart and Kidd, a firm founded in 1914. In 1931 it published I Sailed with Chinese Pirates by Aleko E. Lilius. On the 2nd of June 1933, D. Appleton & Company merged with The Century Company, founded in 1881, forming the Appleton-Century Company. In 1945 the firm sold its hymn books department to Revell Publishing. Three years later, in 1948, Appleton-Century merged with F. S. Crofts Co., a company founded in 1924, to form Appleton-Century-Crofts.