(1814–1872) partnered with John Wiley in 1838 to form Wiley & Putnam. The company began as Wiley & Putnam with the 1838 partnership between
George Palmer Putnam and John Wiley, whose father had founded his own company in 1807. In 1841, Putnam went to
London where he set up a branch office in
Covent Garden, the first American company ever to do so. He returned to New York in 1848, dissolved the partnership with John Wiley, and established G. Putnam Broadway with a view to publishing a variety of works, including quality illustrated books. Wiley began John Wiley (later
John Wiley and Sons), which is still an independent publisher to the present day. In 1853, G. P. Putnam & Co. started ''
Putnam's Magazine'' with
Charles Frederick Briggs as its editor. On George Palmer Putnam's death in 1872, the business was inherited by his sons
George,
John and Irving, and the firm's name was changed to G. P. Putnam's Sons. The eldest son, George H. Putnam, became president of the firm and held the position for over fifty years. In 1874, the company established its own book
printing and manufacturing office, set up by John Putnam and operating initially out of newly leased premises at 182
Fifth Avenue. This printing side of the business later became a separate division called the Knickerbocker Press, and was relocated in 1889 to the
Knickerbocker Press Building, built specifically for the press in
New Rochelle, New York. When George H. Putnam died in 1930, the various Putnam heirs voted to merge the firm with
Minton, Balch & Co., who became the majority stockholders. George Palmer Putnam's grandson
George P. Putnam (1887–1950) left the firm at that time, and Melville Minton, the partner and sales manager of Minton Balch & Co., became the acting president and majority stockholder of the firm until his death in 1956. In 1936, Putnam acquired the publisher
Coward-McCann (later
Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, after
John Geoghegan its long-time chairman) and ran it as an imprint into the 1980s. Upon Melville Minton's death, his son Walter J. Minton took control of the company. In 1965, G. P. Putnam's Sons acquired
Berkley Books, a mass market
paperback publishing house.
MCA bought Putnam Publishing Group and
Berkley Publishing Group in 1975.
Phyllis E. Grann, who was running
Pocket Books for
Simon & Schuster, was brought on board in 1976 as editor-in-chief. In an attempt to boost Putnam's profits, Grann worked with MCA executive Stanley Newman on a financial model that emphasized publishing key authors annually and took Putnam from $10 million in revenue to over $100 million by 1983. The ownership of Putnam changed a number of times in the 1990s. MCA was bought by
Matsushita Electric in 1990. Then
the Seagram Company acquired 80% of MCA from Matsushita, and shortly afterwards Seagram changed the name of the company to
Universal Studios, Inc. The new owners had no interest in publishing, but Grann stepped in and was able to broker the deal for Putnam to be merged with
Penguin Group (a division of British publishing conglomerate
Pearson PLC) in 1996. ==Authors==