W. W. Norton & Company is an American publishing company based in New York City. Established in 1923, it has been owned wholly by its employees since the early 1960s. The company is known for its Norton Anthologies (particularly '' The Norton Anthology of English Literature'') and its texts in the Norton Critical Editions series, both of which are frequently assigned in university literature courses.

History and overview

The roots of the company date to 1923, when

William Warder Norton William Warder Norton (September 17, 1891 – November 7, 1945) was a publisher and co-founder of W. W. Norton & Company. He grew up in Columbus, Ohio, moved to New York City and started an import-export business, met and married Margaret Dow ...

founded the firm with his wife Mary Dows Herter Norton, and became its first president. In the 1960s, Mary Norton offered most of her stock to its leading editors and managers. Storer D. Lunt took over in 1945 after Norton's death, and was succeeded by George Brockway (1957–1976), Donald S. Lamm (1976–1994), W. Drake McFeely (1994–2017), and Julia A. Reidhead (2017–present). Reidhead was vice president and publishing director of Norton's College division and a former editor of the Norton Anthologies. Imprints of W. W. Norton include Norton Professional Books (professional works in mental health, well-being, architecture and design, and education), Countryman Press (lifestyle and instructional books, including healthy-living, cookbooks, and hiking guides), Liveright (20th century classics and new works), and Norton Young Readers (books for preschoolers to young adults).

Series

Norton Anthologies

Norton Anthologies collect canonical works from various literatures; perhaps the best known anthology in the series is the '' Norton Anthology of English Literature'', which, , is in its 10th edition. Norton Anthologies offer general headnotes on each author, a general introduction to each period of literature, and annotations for every anthologized text.

Norton Critical Editions

Like Oxford World's Classics and Penguin Classics, Norton Critical Editions provide reprints of classic literature and in some cases, classic non-fiction works. However, unlike most critical editions, all Norton Critical Editions are sourcebooks that provide a selection of contextual documents and critical essays along with an edited text. Annotations to the text are provided as footnotes, rather than as endnotes.

The States and the Nation

The States and the Nation series was published in celebration of the United States Bicentennial. It comprised 51 volumes, one for each state and the District of Columbia. The series was administered by the American Association for State and Local History via a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.The States and the Nation
librarything.com. Retrieved 29 June 2021.

Notable authors

Dean Acheson Dean Gooderham Acheson (pronounced ; April 11, 1893October 12, 1971) was an American statesman and lawyer. As the 51st U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was also Truman ...

A. R. Ammons Archibald Randolph Ammons (February 18, 1926 – February 25, 2001) was an American poet who won the annual National Book Award for Poetry in 1973 and 1993. Poetic themes Ammons wrote about humanity's relationship to nature in alternately comi ...

* Diane Ackerman * J. G. Ballard * Andrea Barrett *

Vincent Bugliosi Vincent T. Bugliosi Jr. (; August 18, 1934 – June 6, 2015) was an American prosecutor and author who served as Deputy District Attorney for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office between 1964 and 1972. He became best known for s ...

Pete Buttigieg Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg ( ; ; Sometimes pronounced or , but not by Buttigieg himself. born January 19, 1982) is an American politician and former military officer who is currently serving as the United States secretary of transp ...

* Kate Brown * Jared Diamond * Rita Dove * John Dower *

Andre Dubus III Andre Dubus III (born September 11, 1959) is an American novelist and short story writer. He is a member of the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Early life and education Born in Oceanside, California, to Patricia (née Lowe) an ...

Stephen Dunn Stephen Elliot Dunn (June 24, 1939June 24, 2021) was an American poet and educator who authored twenty-one collections of poetry. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 2001 collection, ''Different Hours,'' and received an Academy Award i ...

Erik Erikson Erik Homburger Erikson (born Erik Salomonsen; 15 June 1902 – 12 May 1994) was a German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on psychological development of human beings. He coined the phrase identity cr ...

* Eric Foner *

Nadine Gordimer Nadine Gordimer (20 November 192313 July 2014) was a South African writer and political activist. She received the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Prize in Literature in 1991, recognized as a writer "who through her magnificent epic writin ...

* Annette Gordon-Reed *

Stephen Greenblatt Stephen Jay Greenblatt (born November 7, 1943) is an American Shakespearean, literary historian, and author. He has served as the John Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University since 2000. Greenblatt is the general edit ...

* Pekka Hämäläinen * Seamus Heaney * Sam Harris * Carl Jung * Sebastian Junger * Nicole Krauss * Eric Kandel * Paul Krugman * Maxine Kumin * Stanley Kunitz * Joseph Lash * Michael Lewis *

William McFeely William Shield McFeely (September 25, 1930 – December 11, 2019) was an American historian known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1981 biography of Ulysses S. Grant, as well as his contributions to a reevaluation of the Reconstruction era, and fo ...

* Larry McMurtry *

John Matteson John Matteson (born March 3, 1961) is an American professor of English and legal writing at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. He won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for his first book, '' Eden's Outc ...

* John Mearsheimer * Edmund Morgan * Edmund Phelps *

Chuck Palahniuk Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk (; born February 21, 1962) is an American freelance journalist and novelist who describes his work as transgressional fiction. He has published 19 novels, three nonfiction books, two graphic novels, and two adul ...

* Gustave Reese * Adrienne Rich *

Mary Roach Mary Roach (born March 20, 1959) is an American author specializing in popular science and humor. She has published six New York Times bestsellers: '' Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers'' (2003), '' Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife ...

* Russell Shorto *

Jonathan Spence Jonathan Dermot Spence (11 August 1936 – 25 December 2021) was an English-born American historian, sinologist, and writer who specialized in Chinese history. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 1993 to 2008. His ...

Joseph Stiglitz Joseph Eugene Stiglitz (; born February 9, 1943) is an American New Keynesian economist, a public policy analyst, and a full professor at Columbia University. He is a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2001) and the Joh ...

* William Taubman * Alan Taylor * Neil deGrasse Tyson * Harold Varmus *

Isser Woloch Isser Woloch (born 1937) is the Moore Collegiate Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia. His work focuses on the French Revolution and on Napoleon. He was educated at Columbia (A.B., 1959) and at Princeton (Ph.D., 1965). He was the winner of ...

* Sean Wilentz *

Edward O. Wilson Edward Osborne Wilson (June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021) was an American biologist, naturalist, entomologist and writer. According to David Attenborough, Wilson was the world's leading expert in his specialty of myrmecology, the study of ...

Fareed Zakaria Fareed Rafiq Zakaria (; born 20 January 1964) is an Indian-American journalist, political commentator, and author. He is the host of CNN's ''Fareed Zakaria GPS'' and writes a weekly paid column for ''The Washington Post.'' He has been a columnist ...

* Hal Varian

References

External links

*
W.W. Norton & Company records, 1923-1967
at the

Rare Book & Manuscript Library The Rare Book & Manuscript Library is principal repository for special collections of Columbia University. Located in New York City on the university's Morningside Heights campus, its collections span more than 4,000 years, from early Mesopotam ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:W. W. Norton and Company American companies established in 1923 1923 establishments in New York (state) Book publishing companies based in New York City Employee-owned companies of the United States Publishing companies established in 1923