American Book Company (1890)

The American Book Company (ABC) was an educational book publisher in the United States that specialized in elementary school, secondary school and collegiate-level textbooks. It is best known for publishing the McGuffey Readers, which sold 120 million copies between 1836 and 1960.[1]

This article is about the American Book Company established in 1890. For the American Book Company established in 1996, see American Book Company (1996).
American Book Company
StatusDefunct
Founded1890
FounderVan Antwerp, Bragg and Co., A.S. Barnes & Co., D. Appleton and Co., and Ivison, Blakeman and Co.
SuccessorD. C. Heath and Company
Country of originUnited States
Publication typesbooks

History
American Book Company, letter envelope 25 September 1916

American Book Company was formed in 1890 by the consolidation of Van Antwerp, Bragg and Co., A.S. Barnes & Co., D. Appleton and Co., and Ivison, Blakeman and Co.[2] It was acquired by Litton Industries in 1967[3] and existed as a division of Litton Educational Publishing, Inc. until being sold to the International Thomson Organization in 1981.[4] Thomson then sold its American Book Company K-12 assets to D. C. Heath and Company in 1981. The company was absorbed into D. C. Heath and ceased to exist as an imprint. Any remaining K-12 assets of the American Book Company are now owned by Houghton Mifflin (now Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), which acquired D. C. Heath and Company in 1995.

Many of the college level textbook rights of ABC/Litton were sold by International Thomson as well, to Van Nostrand Reinhold, though some[5][6] remained under the Wadsworth imprint at Thomson, which is now Cengage Learning.

American Writers Series

Beginning in 1934 and continuing into the 1940s, the American Book Company published a 23-volume American Writers Series with Harry H. Clark as the general editor.[7] Each volume had one or two editors and consisted of "representative selections, with introduction, bibliography, and notes".[8][9][10][11][12][13]

The volume on Benjamin Franklin drew a warm tribute from Carl Van Doren to Frank Luther Mott. [14]

References
Notes
  1. "McGuffey Readers World". The Paradigm Company. Retrieved 2008-04-17.
  2. "American Book Company Records". Syracuse University Library.
  3. Betsky, Seymour (September 1983). "American Literature in the Marketplace. Literature and Cultural Inquiry". Higher Education Quarterly. Blackwell Publishing. 37 (4): 320–340. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2273.1983.tb02009.x.
  4. Kleinfield, N. r (1981-01-29). "Litton Plans Publishing Group Sale". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2018-12-17.
  5. "Great Traditions in Ethics". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2008-04-18.
  6. "Great Traditions in Ethics". Cengage Learning. Archived from the original on 2008-04-18.
  7. Stewart, Randall (1 January 1934). "Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Whitman, Edited by Harry H. Clark (Book Review)". New England Quarterly. 7 (1): 737. doi:10.2307/359199. JSTOR 359199.
  8. Faust, C. H. (1938). "Reviewed works: Benjamin Franklin: Representative Selections, with Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes by Frank Luther Mott and Chester E. Jorgenson; Benjamin Franklin, Englishman and American by Verner Winslow Crane". Modern Philology. 35 (3): 339–342. doi:10.1086/388322. JSTOR 434137.
  9. Holt, W. Stull (1941). "Reviewed works: John Lothrop Motley: Representative Selections, with Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes edited by Chester Penn Higby, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, and B. T. Schantz, Instructor in English, Colgate University; Francis Parkman: Representative Selections, with Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes by Wilbur L. Schramm, Assistant Professor of English, University of Iowa". The American Historical Review. 47 (1). doi:10.1086/ahr/47.1.153.
  10. "HERMAN MELVILLE, by Willard Thorpe (Book Review)". 1939. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  11. "WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, Edited by Tremaine McDowell (Book Review)". 1935. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  12. "THOMAS PAINE, Edited by Harry Hayden Clark". 1944. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  13. "MARK TWAIN, Edited by Fred Lewis Pattee (Book Review)". 1935. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  14. Letter quoted on the Frank Luther Mott page


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