Farrar, Straus, and Company was founded in 1945[5] by Roger W. Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar.[3][6] 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.[3] 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.[3] 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.[3]
In 1950, the name changed to Farrar, Straus & Young (for Stanley Young, a playwright, author (at Farrar & Rinehart[7]), a literary critic for The New York Times, and an original stockholder and board member).[8][9][10]
Robert Giroux joined the company in 1955, and after he later became a partner, the name was changed to Farrar, Straus and Giroux.[3] Giroux had been working for Harcourt and had been angered when Harcourt refused to allow him to publish Salinger's Catcher in the Rye.[3] 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.[3] 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."[3] In 1964, Straus named Giroux chairman of the board and officially added Giroux's name to the publishing company.[3]
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.[3][12][13] Straus offered FSG to the Holtzbrinck family because of their reputation for publishing serious works of literature.[3]
21st century
Jonathan Galassi served as both president and publisher until 2018.[14] Andrew Mandel joined in 2004 as a deputy publisher. Eric Chinski is editor-in-chief. 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.[15] Other notable editors include Sean McDonald, Daphne Durham, 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 will be moved to the FSG colophon by August 2016.[16]
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 is joined by Daphne Durham, formerly editor-in-chief and publisher of Amazon Publishing, as executive director.[27][28]
Scientific American / FSG,[33] led by Amanda Moon, publishes non-fiction popular science books for the general reader. Its authors include Jesse Bering, Daniel Chamovitz, Kevin Dutton, and Caleb Scharf.
^ abcdefghijklSilverman, Al (2008). The Time of Their Lives: The Golden Age of Great American Book Publishers, Their Editors, and Authors. Truman Talley. ISBN978-0312-35003-1.
^Macmillan. "About Macmillan". us.macmillan.com. Archived from the original on July 26, 2022. Retrieved June 19, 2016.
^Landler, Mark (October 14, 2002). "Another German Publisher Mulls Its Wartime Past". The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Archived from the original on January 15, 2022. Retrieved January 15, 2022. The Von Holtzbrinck Group, the conglomerate that owns Farrar Straus and Giroux and other gilded names in American publishing, has disclosed that it has hired a writer to research the company's history from 1933 to 1945.
^ ab"House of Galassi". publishersweekly.com. Archived from the original on August 16, 2018. Retrieved August 16, 2018.
^Zeitchik, Steven (June 14, 2004). "Crichton gets imprint at FSG". Publishers Weekly. Archived from the original on August 16, 2018. Retrieved February 20, 2014.
