The firm was founded in 1846 by
Charles Scribner I and Isaac D. Baker as "Baker & Scribner." After Baker's death, Scribner bought the remainder of the company and renamed it the "Charles Scribner Company." In 1865, the company first ventured into magazine publishing with
Hours at Home. In 1870, the Scribners organized a new firm, Scribner and Company, to publish a magazine entitled ''
Scribner's Monthly''. After the death of Charles Scribner I in 1871, his son
John Blair Scribner took over as president of the company. His other sons
Charles Scribner II and
Arthur Hawley Scribner would also join the firm in 1875 and 1884. They each later served as presidents. When the other partners in the venture sold their stake to the family, the company was renamed Charles Scribner's Sons. The company launched
St. Nicholas Magazine in 1873 with
Mary Mapes Dodge as editor and
Frank R. Stockton as assistant editor; it became well known as a children's magazine. When the Scribner family sold the magazine company to outside investors in 1881, ''Scribner's Monthly
was renamed the Century Magazine.'' The Scribner brothers were enjoined from publishing any magazine for a period. In 1886, at the expiration of this term, they launched ''
Scribner's Magazine.'' The firm's headquarters were in the
Scribner Building, built in 1893, on lower Fifth Avenue at 21st Street, and later in the
Charles Scribner's Sons Building, on Fifth Avenue in midtown. Both buildings were designed by
Ernest Flagg in a
Beaux Arts style. The children's book division was established in 1934 under the leadership of
Alice Dalgliesh. It published works by distinguished authors and illustrators including
N.C. Wyeth,
Robert A. Heinlein,
Marcia Brown,
Will James,
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and
Leo Politi. Scribner merged with Atheneum in 1978 and into
Macmillan Inc. in 1984. In 1994, Macmillan was bought by
Simon & Schuster. The reference division along with Charles Scribner's Sons and Scribner trademarks were sold as part of Simon & Schuster's Macmillan Library Reference (MLR) to
Pearson in 1998, Pearson resold MLR to
Thomson Corporation a year later. Thomson Corporation placed the acquired MLR divisions into Gale. Thomson Learning including Gale became
Cengage Group in 2007, Simon & Schuster licensed the Scribner trademarks for trade publishing from Gale. The other divisions are
Atria Publishing Group,
Simon & Schuster Publishing Group, and the
Gallery Publishing Group. Susan Moldow would lead the new Scribner division as president. == Presidents ==