Macmillan Celebrates 175 Years of Publishing

“If a large tree grows from this small seed we shall be grateful.” Daniel Macmillan, London, 1843

“What Alexander handed down... was a tradition or, more truly, a marked character...” Charles Morgan, The House of Macmillan, 1943

Macmillan is marking its 175th anniversary in 2018 with a number of publishing projects and a celebratory toast at this year’s BookExpo at the Javits Center in New York City.

The global publishing powerhouse, which today publishes books in more than 120 countries, was founded in London in 1843 by two brothers, Daniel and Alexander Macmillan. The company grew to become one of the largest publishing houses in the world by the turn of the 20th century, with offices in the United States, Australia, and India. Today, under the ownership of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, Macmillan and its employees continue to draw inspiration from its rich heritage and the entrepreneurial spirit of its founders.

U.S. Celebrations U.S. activities to mark the anniversary include a kickoff toast on Thursday, May 31 at 4:30 PM in Macmillan’s booth at BookExpo. Additional events continue throughout the fall at regional trade shows and Winter Institute, featuring celebratory events and exclusive giveaways.

Macmillan USA will also be launching a social campaign on its social accounts (@MacmillanUSA on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) this June using the hashtag #Macmillan175 and featuring employees and authors telling their “Macmillan Story,” as well as notable historical facts about the organization.

Global Celebrations

In October 2018, 175 years on from the publication of the first Macmillan book, The Philosophy of Training by A.R Craig, Macmillan Collector’s Library will publish a new edition of one of the most successful anthologies in English literary history, The Golden Treasury of the Best Songs & Lyrical Poems in the English Language, edited by Francis Turner Palgrave.

The original edition, published in 1861, sold close to 100,000 copies and helped popularize Wordsworth and the other Romantic poets around the world. The new edition will be part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library. Featuring a foreword by the UK Poet Laureate and Picador author, Carol Ann Duffy, it will be bound in real cloth and feature a ribbon marker and gilt edges.

In honor of the milestone anniversary, Macmillan will also publish a comprehensive international history of the company called The Macmillan Story in September, for distribution to employees, clients and authors.

“From a small seed…”

Macmillan was founded in London in 1843 by Daniel and Alexander Macmillan, sons of Scottish crofters. Aged 30 and 25 and with no formal education, the brothers opened a bookshop in February 1843 and published their first two titles by November of the same year.

2018 also marks the bicentenary birth date of Alexander Macmillan, who took over the business after Daniel’s death in 1857. Much of Macmillan’s early success can be attributed to Alexander’s wide-ranging curiosity, his generosity towards authors and colleagues, his business acumen and a lifelong passion for reading, learning and books. Passed down through Daniel and Alexander’s children and colleagues, Macmillan publishers continue to foster and embody these characteristics today.

By 1999, the various companies founded by the Macmillan Family – including the independent US publishing house – were brought back together under the shared ownership of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, another independent, family-owned publisher based in Stuttgart, Germany.

Macmillan Today & Tomorrow

Throughout its history, Macmillan companies have published some of the best-loved fiction, nonfiction and children’s authors of all time, including Lewis Carroll, Rudyard Kipling, Madeleine L’Engle and the poetry of W.B. Yeats and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, to the more recent Vice President Joe Biden, W. Bruce Cameron, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, Atul Gawande, Kristin Hannah, Hilary Mantel, Liane Moriarty, Louise Penny, Nora Roberts, Marilynne Robinson, Brandon Sanderson, Oprah Winfrey, Gene Luen Yang and more.

Macmillan has also produced a wealth of globally influential educational, nonfiction, academic and reference texts, including the science journal Nature, Nesfield’s Manual of English Grammar, The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, The Statesman’s Yearbook and Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. As part of Springer Nature, Palgrave Macmillan continues to publish award-winning research across the humanities, social sciences and business, while Macmillan Education supports students, teachers and institutions through a lifetime of learning by providing them with world-class content in the most relevant and engaging formats.

Macmillan continues to branch out into new ventures spanning the industry and beyond, from the addition of Flatiron Books and Celadon Books; to leveraging the explosive growth in podcasting by starting the Macmillan Podcast Network. “We’ve been looking at all facets of the business, with a special focus on internal growth,” said Macmillan Publishers President, Don Weisberg. “We’re excited about the future, and are working to lay the groundwork for the next 175 years.”

“We try to keep that family feel within Macmillan,” said John Sargent, Macmillan’s CEO. We believe that staying true to our roots as a family owned company brings out a positive and comfortable environment for not only our employees but for our authors too. It’s a place where you can feel at home and we hope to continue that for the next 175 years and beyond.”

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Macmillan Publishers

Macmillan Publishers is a global trade book publishing company with prominent imprints around the world. Macmillan publishes a broad range of award-winning books for children and adults in all categories and formats.

U.S. publishers include Celadon Books, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Flatiron Books, Henry Holt & Company, Macmillan Audio, Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, Picador, St. Martin’s Press and Tor Books. In the UK, Australia, India, and South Africa, Macmillan publishes under the Pan Macmillan name. The German company, Holtzbrinck Deutsche Buchverlage, includes among its imprints S. Fischer, Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Rowohlt, and Droemer Knaur.

Macmillan Publishers is a division of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, a large family-owned media company headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany.

us.macmillan.com