Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Founding

Farrar, Straus, and Company was founded in 1945 by Roger W. Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. The first book was Yank: The G.I. Story of the War, a compilation of articles that appeared in Yank, the Army Weekly, then There Were Two Pirates, a novel by James Branch Cabell.

The first years of existence were rough until they published the diet book Look Younger, Live Longer by Gayelord Hauser in 1950. The book went on to sell 500,000 copies and Straus said that the book carried them along for a while. In the early years, Straus and his wife Dorothea, went prospecting for books in Italy. It was there that they found the memoir Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi and other rising Italian authors: Alberto Moravia, Giovannino Guareschi and Cesare Pavese. Farrar, Straus also poached or lured away authors from other publishers—one was Edmund Wilson, who was unhappy with Random House at the time but remained with Farrar, Straus for the remainder of his career.

In 1950, the name changed to Farrar, Straus & Young (for Stanley Young, a playwright, author (at Farrar & Rinehart), a literary critic for The New York Times, and an original stockholder and board member).

Merger

In 1953, Pellegrini & Cudahy merged with Farrar, Straus & Young.

Robert Giroux joined the company in 1955, and after he later became a partner, the name was changed to Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Giroux had been working for Harcourt and had been angered when Harcourt refused to allow him to publish Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. Giroux brought many literary authors with him including Thomas Merton, John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Flannery O'Connor, Jack Kerouac, Peter Taylor, Randall Jarrell, T.S. Eliot, and Bernard Malamud. Alan Williams described Giroux's "Pied Piper sweep" as "almost certainly the greatest number of authors to follow, on their own initiative, a single editor from house to house in the history of modern publishing." In 1964, Straus named Giroux chairman of the board and officially added Giroux's name to the publishing company.

Sale

Straus continued to run the company for twenty years after his partner Farrar died, until 1993 when he sold a majority interest of the company to the privately owned German publishing conglomerate Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Straus offered FSG to the Holtzbrinck family because of their reputation for publishing serious works of literature.

Twenty-first century

Jonathan Galassi served as both president and publisher until 2018. From 2004 to 2021, Andrew Mandel served as deputy publisher. In 2008, Mitzi Angel came from Fourth Estate in the UK to be publisher of the Faber and Faber Inc. imprint. In 2018, Angel succeeded Galassi as publisher, and was named president in 2021. Jenna Johnson was named vice president and editor in chief in December 2021, taking the baton from Eric Chinski who was named senior executive editor after 15 years as editor in chief. Other notable editors include Sean McDonald and Alex Star.

In February 2015, FSG and Faber and Faber announced the end of their partnership. All books scheduled for release and previously released under the imprint were moved to the FSG colophon by August 2016.

Name history

• Farrar, Straus, and Company (1945–1951)
• Farrar, Straus and Young (1950–1956)
• Farrar, Straus and Cudahy (1953–1963) – acquired L.C. Page & Co. in 1957
• Farrar, Straus, and Company (1963–1964) after Cudahy left the firm.
• Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1964–present)

Current imprints

• MCD/FSG, which is viewed as a kind of a lab to experiment with new styles and genres. The imprint is headed by Sean McDonald, who was joined by Daphne Durham, formerly editor-in-chief and publisher of Amazon Publishing, as executive director to launch the imprint. Durham left MCD in 2023 to join Putnum.
• FSG Originals
• AUWA Books is an imprint directed by Questlove, the celebrated musician, producer, director, and author devoted to finding inspiring new stories and connecting readers to lost voices while building a community of curious minds.
• Quanta Books is a partnership between FSG and the Simons Foundation which illuminates humanity’s quest to understand the universe. From the founding editor of Pulitzer Prize-winning Quanta Magazine.
• Hill and Wang publishes books of academic interest and specializes in history. Its authors include Roland Barthes, William Cronon, Langston Hughes, and Elie Wiesel.
• North Point Press published literary nonfiction with an emphasis on natural history, travel, ecology, music, food, and cultural criticism. Its authors include Peter Matthiessen, Beryl Markham, Guy Davenport, A. J. Liebling, Margaret Visser, Wendell Berry, and M. F. K. Fisher.

Former imprints

• Sarah Crichton Books published books with a slightly commercial bent. The imprint launched with Cathleen Falsani's The God Factor in 2006. Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone was a bestseller and a Starbucks-featured book in 2007.
• Faber and Faber Inc. published a backlist of drama and books on the arts, entertainment, music, pop culture, cultural criticism, and the media. Its authors included David Auburn, Margaret Edson, Doug Wright, Richard Greenberg, Tom Stoppard, David Hare, Neil LaBute, Peter Conrad, Martin Eisenstadt and Courtney Love.
• Scientific American / FSG, led by Amanda Moon, published non-fiction popular science books for the general reader. Its authors included Jesse Bering, Daniel Chamovitz, Kevin Dutton, and Caleb Scharf.
• Noonday Press
• Melanie Kroupa Books (children's book imprint, 2000–2008)
• FSG Originals x Logic, a short-lived imprint for technology books that published Blockchain Chicken Farm.

Bibliography

Main article: List of Farrar, Straus and Giroux books

Books for Young Readers

FSG Books for Young Readers publishes National Book Award winners Madeleine L'Engle (1980), William Steig (1983), Louis Sachar (1998), and Polly Horvath (2003). Books for Young Readers also publishes Natalie Babbitt, Roald Dahl, Jack Gantos, George Selden, Uri Shulevitz, Ozge Samanci, and Peter Sis. FSG Books for Young Readers is operated by Macmillan Children's Publishing Group.

Awards

; Winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature

• Knut Hamsun (1920)
• Hermann Hesse (1946)
• T. S. Eliot (1948)
• Pär Lagerkvist (1951)
• François Mauriac (1952)
• Juan Ramón Jiménez (1956)
• Salvatore Quasimodo (1959)
• Nelly Sachs (1966)
• Yasunari Kawabata (1968)
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1970)
• Pablo Neruda (1971)
• Eugenio Montale (1975)
• Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978)
• Czesław Miłosz (1980)
• Elias Canetti (1981)
• William Golding (1983)
• Wole Soyinka (1986)
• Joseph Brodsky (1987)
• Camilo José Cela (1989)
• Nadine Gordimer (1991)
• Derek Walcott (1992)
• Seamus Heaney (1995)
• Mario Vargas Llosa (2010)
• Peter Handke (2019)
• Louise Glück (2020)

; Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize

• Norman Angell (1933)
• Elie Wiesel (1986)
• Nelson Mandela (1993)

; Winners of the Pulitzer Prize

• John Berryman (1965)
• Bernard Malamud (1967)
• Jean Stafford (1970)
• Robert Lowell (1974)
• Paul Horgan (1976)
• Lanford Wilson (1980)
• James Schuyler (1981)
• Charles Fuller (1982)
• Marsha Norman (1983)
• Thomas L. Friedman (1983, 1988, 2002)
• Oscar Hijuelos (1990)
• Charles Wright (1998)
• Michael Cunningham (1999)
• John McPhee (1999)
• Margaret Edson (1999)
• C. K. Williams (2000)
• David Auburn (2001)
• Louis Menand (2002)
• Jeffrey Eugenides (2003)
• Paul Muldoon (2003)
• Doug Wright (2004)
• Marilynne Robinson (2005)
• Elizabeth A. Fenn (2015)
• Frank Bidart (2017)
• James Forman Jr. (2018)
• Anne Boyer (2020)

; Winners of the National Book Award

• Bernard Malamud (1959, 1967)
• Robert Lowell (1960)
• John Berryman (1969)
• Elizabeth Bishop (1970)
• Isaac Bashevis Singer (1970, 1974)
• Donald Barthelme (1972)
• Flannery O'Connor (1972)
• Richard B. Sewall (1975)
• Michael J. Arlen (1976)
• Tom Wolfe (1980)
• Paula Fox (1983)
• Larry Heinemann (1987)
• Thomas L. Friedman (1989)
• Alice McDermott (1998)
• Edward Ball (1998)
• Susan Sontag (2000)
• Jonathan Franzen (2001)
• Shirley Hazzard (2003)
• C. K. Williams (2003)
• Richard Powers (2006)
• Denis Johnson (2007)
• George Packer (2013)
• Louise Glück (2014)
• Evan Osnos (2014)

Notable authors

• Paul Beatty
• John Berryman
• Roberto Bolaño
• Joseph Brodsky
• Joan Didion
• David Duchovny
• T. S. Eliot
• Jeffrey Eugenides
• Jonathan Franzen
• Louise Glück
• Garth Greenwell
• Randall Jarrell
• Denis Johnson
• Jamaica Kincaid
• Yusef Komunyakaa
• Madeleine L'Engle
• Ben Lerner
• Carlo Levi
• Robert Lowell
• Bernard Malamud
• John McPhee
• Thomas Merton
• Flannery O'Connor
• Walker Percy
• Sally Rooney
• Isaac Bashevis Singer
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
• Susan Sontag
• Theodore Sturgeon
• Peter Taylor
• Scott Turow
• Jeff VanderMeer
• Edmund Wilson
• Tom Wolfe

Staff

Jack Kerouac's then-girlfriend Joyce Johnson started work in 1957, when Sheila Cudahy was a partner at the firm.

References

References

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2. "About Macmillan". Macmillan.
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5. (October 8, 1944). "New England, 1620; MAYFLOWER BOY. By Stanley Young. Illustrated by Edward Shenton. 272 pp. New York: Farrar & Rinehart. $2.".
6. Wallace, Tom. (August 12, 2013). "Farrar, Straus & Giroux: publishing's 'perfect storm'". bookbrunch.co.uk.
7. "Stanley Young". www.williamsamericanart.com.
8. Kachka, Boris. (August 12, 2014). "Hothouse: The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America's Most Celebrated Publishing House, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux". Simon and Schuster.
9. (April 4, 1953). "2 BOOK PUBLISHERS MERGE; Pellegrini & Cudahy Unite With Farrar, Straus & Young".
10. "Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck".
11. Landler, Mark. (October 14, 2002). "Another German Publisher Mulls Its Wartime Past". The New York Times.
12. (October 25, 2021). "2 FSG Promotes Mitzi Angel to President".
13. (2021-12-02). "Jenna Johnson Appointed Editor in Chief of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Bernardine Evaristo to Become President of Royal Society of Literature, and More".
14. "Faber ends FSG partnership".
15. "History of Farrar, Straus and Giroux Inc.".
16. "Library of Congress LCCN Permalink n96043234".
17. Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher. (May 27, 2004). "Roger W. Straus Jr., Book Publisher From the Age of the Independents, Dies at 87".
18. "Library of Congress LCCN Permalink n96043241".
19. "Letterhead, Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, Inc., New York, NY, 1958".
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22. (August 5, 2013). "Anatomy of a Publisher".
23. "Library of Congress LCCN Permalink n96043257".
24. "House of Galassi".
25. "Guide to the Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Records".
26. Weinman, Sarah. (May 9, 2016). "McDonald Named Publisher of New FSG Imprint, and More". lunch.publishersmarketplace.com.
27. (May 17, 2016). "People Round-Up, Mid-May 2016". Publishing Trends.
28. Bryant, Samantha. (2023-09-11). "Daphne Ming Durham, Executive Editor".
29. "About FSG".
30. "Questlove to Publish New Book on Hip-Hop: ‘Couldn’t Be More Excited’ (Exclusive)".
31. "About FSG".
32. (2025-01-29). "Announcing Quanta Books, a New Imprint Dedicated to Illuminating Science".
33. "HILL AND WANG".
34. "Library of Congress LCCN Permalink no2006079532".
35. Zeitchik, Steven. (June 14, 2004). "Crichton gets imprint at FSG".
36. "Crichton to Leave FSG at End of Year".
37. Habash, Gabe. (May 18, 2012). "FSG, 'Scientific American' Roll Out New Imprint".
38. "News Shorts".
39. "Melanie Kroupa to Join Marshall Cavendish".
40. (2023). "FSG Originals x Logic". Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
41. "Home".
42. [[Norman Angell]], ''After All: The Autobiography of Norman Angell'' (London: [[Hamish Hamilton]], 1951; rpt. [[Farrar, Straus and Young]], 1952).
43. [[Elie Wiesel]], ''Night'' ([[Hill & Wang]], 1958; rpt. 2006).
44. [[Nelson Mandela]], ''Dare Not Linger'' (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017).
45. "Giving an 'F': Rewriting the History of FSG".