Henry Holt and Company

• 1. Introduction

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  Henry Holt and Company is an American book publisher based in New York City, and it has been putting books into print since 1866. Two men founded it that year, Henry Holt and Frederick Leypoldt. Few publishers in the United States can claim a longer run. In the country today, the company operates under Macmillan Publishers. A house this old leaves a long trail of authors, imprints, and owners. Who filled its catalogue? What happened when it merged with other firms? And why did a book publisher once put out a magazine?

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• 2. Authors and Imprints

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  Robert Frost, Hermann Hesse, and Ivan Turgenev all appeared under the Holt name, as did Robert Louis Stevenson. The list also includes Erich Fromm, Norman Mailer, Thomas Pynchon, Paul Auster, Hilary Mantel, Herta Müller, and Noam Chomsky.

  Metropolitan Books, Times Books, Owl Books, and Picador are among the imprints the company publishes under. Holt Paperbacks is a separate name on its list.

  The subjects stretch widely. The company publishes American and international fiction, along with biography, history, politics, science, psychology, and health. It also has a children's literature list, which sits beside the adult books under the same roof.

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• 3. Mergers and Owners

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  In 1960, Holt joined with Rinehart & Company of New York and the John C. Winston Company of Philadelphia. The Wall Street Journal reported on the 1st of March that Holt stockholders had approved the merger, the last of three approvals. The paper described the outcome this way: "Henry Holt is the surviving concern, but will be known as Holt, Rinehart, Winston, Inc."

  CBS purchased the company in 1967. That ownership lasted until 1985, when the group split into two parts.

  The retail publishing arm, along with the Holt name, went to the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, based in Stuttgart. Holtzbrinck has kept Holt as a subsidiary, publishing under its original name.

  The educational publishing arm kept the Holt, Rinehart and Winston name. It was sold to Harcourt.

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• 4. Magazine and Series

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  From 1951 to 1985, Holt published the magazine Field & Stream. The magazine's final year is the same year the CBS-owned group divided.

  The Holt catalogue also carried named book series. The American Science Series and The American Presidents Series are two of them. Others include Amateur Studies, English Readings, and the Holt Spoken Language Series.

  Two series had a lighter tone in their titles, the Leisure Hour Series and the Leisure Moment Series. The Library of Foreign Poetry gathered verse from beyond American borders. Another series, The Makers of the Nineteenth Century, was overseen by its general editor, Basil Williams.

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