G. P. Putnam's Sons

G. P. Putnam's Sons is an American book publisher based in New York City, New York. The publisher was founded in 1838 and features books by authors such as Renée Ahdieh, C. J. Box, Edgar Allan Poe, and many others. Since 1996, it has been an imprint of the Penguin Group.

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.^{[citation needed]}

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.