J. B. Lippincott & Co. was an American
publishing house
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
founded in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
in 1836 by Joshua Ballinger Lippincott. It was incorporated in 1885 as J. B. Lippincott Company.
History
1836–1977
![Portrait of Joshua Ballinger Lippincott G268](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Portrait_of_Joshua_Ballinger_Lippincott_G268.png)
Joshua Ballinger Lippincott (March 18, 1813 – January 5, 1886) founded the publishing company in Philadelphia when he was 23 years old. J. B. Lippincott & Co. began business publishing Bibles and prayer books before expanding into history, biography, fiction, poetry, and gift books. The company later added almanacs, medicine and law, school textbooks, and dictionaries. In 1849, Lippincott acquired Grigg, Elliot & Co., a significant publisher and wholesaler whose origins dated back to printer and bookseller Benjamin and Jacob Johnson in 1792. In 1850 J. B. Lippincott & Co. became Lippincott, Grambo & Co. but reverted to its former name in 1855. The company was incorporated in 1878 as J. B. Lippincott Company. Lippincott published the first textbook of nursing in the US in 1878 and the first issue of the ''
American Journal of Nursing
The ''American Journal of Nursing'' (AJN) is a monthly peer-reviewed nursing journal established in 1900. the editor-in-chief was Maureen Shawn Kennedy and it is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. In 2009 the journal was selected as one o ...
'' in 1900. By the end of the 19th century, Lippincott was one of the largest and best-known publishers in the world.
''
Lippincott's Monthly Magazine
''Lippincott's Monthly Magazine'' was a 19th-century literary magazine published in Philadelphia from 1868 to 1915, when it relocated to New York to become ''Robert M. McBride, McBride's Magazine''. It merged with ''Scribner's Magazine'' in 1916. ...
'', a popular periodical containing a complete novel, short stories, poetry, and opinion, was published in the US and the UK from 1868 to 1914. During the 20th century Lippincott also became a major publisher of schoolbooks for elementary and high school education and of references, textbooks, and journals in medicine and nursing.
In 1961, Lippincott acquired the religious publisher A. J. Holman.
1978–1995
In 1978, J. B. Lippincott Company was acquired by
Harper & Row
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins based in New York City.
History
J. & J. Harper (1817–1833)
James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishin ...
Publishers, Inc. A. J. Holman was sold to the
Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1979.
Lippincott's trade, juvenile and elementary and high school divisions were merged into Harper's. The remaining publishing activities, in medicine, nursing, and allied health, were combined with Harper's programs to form "J.B. Lippincott - the Health Professions Publisher of Harper & Row". In 1990, Lippincott was acquired by
Wolters Kluwer
Wolters Kluwer N.V. () is a Dutch information services company. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, Netherlands (Global) and Philadelphia, United States (corporate). Wolters Kluwer in its current form was founded in 1987 with a ...
N.V. of The Netherlands. J. B. Lippincott Company celebrated its 200th anniversary in 1992.
1996–present
Wolters Kluwer merged Lippincott with its other medical publisher, Raven Press, in 1996 to form Lippincott-Raven Publishers. In 1998 Wolters Kluwer acquired medical publisher Williams & Wilkins and combined it with Lippincott-Raven to form
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) is an American imprint of the American Dutch publishing conglomerate Wolters Kluwer. It was established by the acquisition of Williams & Wilkins and its merger with J.B. Lippincott Company in 1998. Under the LW ...
. After further internal reorganization at Wolters Kluwer in 2002, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins ceased to exist as an operational entity; instead, the names Lippincott Williams & Wilkins and Lippincott are now used solely as publishing imprints of Wolters Kluwer Health.
Leadership
Presidents of J. B. Lippincott Company
*Joshua Ballinger Lippincott (1885–1886)
*Craige Lippincott (1886–1911)
*J. Bertram Lippincott (1911–1926), (Chairman, 1926–1940)
*
Joseph Wharton Lippincott Joseph Wharton Lippincott (February 28, 1887 – October 22, 1976) was a noted publisher, author, naturalist, and sportsman. He was the grandson of Joshua Ballinger Lippincott, founder of Philadelphia publisher J.B. Lippincott Company, and of ...
(1926–1949), (Chairman, 1949–1958)
*Howard K. Bauernfeind (1949–1958), (Chairman, 1958–1973)
*
Joseph W. Lippincott, Jr. (1958–1978), (Chairman 1974–1978)
*Barton H. Lippincott (1978–1981), (Chairman, 1981–1987)
*Edward B. Hutton, Jr. (1981–1983)
*Lewis Reines (1985–1986)
*Peter D. Nalle (1987–1990)
*Alan M. Edelson (1990–1994)
*Mary Martin Rogers (1995–1996)
Co-Presidents of Lippincott-Raven Publishers
*Mary Martin Rogers and Joseph W. Lippincott III (1996–1998)
Co-Presidents of
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) is an American imprint of the American Dutch publishing conglomerate Wolters Kluwer. It was established by the acquisition of Williams & Wilkins and its merger with J.B. Lippincott Company in 1998. Under the LW ...
*Edward B. Hutton, Jr. and Joseph W. Lippincott III (1998–2000)
*Jeffrey Smith and Tim Satterfield (2000–2002)
Notable authors
*
Edward Abbey
Edward Paul Abbey (January 29, 1927 – March 14, 1989) was an American author, essayist, and environmental activist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues and criticism of public land policies. His best-known works include ''Desert Solit ...
*
Henry Adams
Henry Brooks Adams (February 16, 1838 – March 27, 1918) was an American historian and a member of the Adams political family, descended from two U.S. Presidents.
As a young Harvard graduate, he served as secretary to his father, Charles Fra ...
*
James Baldwin
James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'', was published in 1953; de ...
*
Hall Caine
Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine (14 May 1853 – 31 August 1931), usually known as Hall Caine, was a British novelist, dramatist, short story writer, poet and critic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Caine's popularity during ...
*
Harper Lee
Nelle Harper Lee (April 28, 1926February 19, 2016) was an American novelist best known for her 1960 novel ''To Kill a Mockingbird''. It won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize and has become a classic of modern American literature. Lee has received numero ...
*
Vincent T. DeVita
Vincent Theodore DeVita Jr. (born March 7, 1935) is the Amy and Joseph Perella Professor of Medicine at Yale Cancer Center, and a Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health. He directed the Yale Cancer Center from 1993 to 2003. He has been pre ...
*
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Ho ...
*
Mary Henderson Eastman
Mary Henderson Eastman (February 24, 1818February 24, 1887) was an American historian and novelist who is noted for her works about Native American life. She was also an advocate of slavery in the United States. In response to Harriet Beecher St ...
*
Leon Edel
Joseph Leon Edel (9 September 1907 – 5 September 1997) was an American/Canadian literary critic and biographer. He was the elder brother of North American philosopher Abraham Edel.
The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' calls Edel "the foremo ...
*
Nikki Giovanni
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. (born June 7, 1943) is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. One of the world's most well-known African-American poets,Jane M. Barstow, Yolanda Williams Page (eds)"Nikki Giovanni" ''E ...
*
Gwethalyn Graham
Gwethalyn Graham (January 18, 1913 – November 25, 1965) was a Canadian writer and activist, whose 1944 novel ''Earth and High Heaven'' was the first Canadian book to reach number one on the New York Times Best Seller list."Gwethalyn Graham: ...
*
Grace Livingston Hill
Grace Livingston Hill (April 16, 1865 – February 23, 1947) was an early 20th-century novelist and wrote both under her real name and the pseudonym Marcia Macdonald. She wrote over 100 novels and numerous short stories. Her characters were mos ...
*
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-1900s American South and published research on Hoodoo (spirituality), hoodoo. The most ...
*
Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...
*
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( ; 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936)''The Times'', (London) 18 January 1936, p. 12. was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work.
...
*
L.L. Langstroth
*
Jack London
John Griffith Chaney (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916), better known as Jack London, was an American novelist, journalist and activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to ...
*
Stanley Loomis
Stanley Loomis (21 December 1922 – 19 December 1972) was the author of four books on French history: ''Du Barry'' (1959), ''Paris in the Terror'' (1964), ''A Crime of Passion'' (1967), and ''The Fatal Friendship'' (1972). His books have bee ...
*
Betty MacDonald
Betty MacDonald (born Anne Elizabeth Campbell Bard; March 26, 1907 – February 7, 1958) was an American author who specialized in humorous autobiographical tales, and is best known for her book ''The Egg and I''. She also wrote the ''Mrs. Piggle- ...
*
John D. MacDonald
John Dann MacDonald (July 24, 1916December 28, 1986) was an American writer of novels and short stories. He is known for his thrillers.
MacDonald was a prolific author of crime and suspense novels, many set in his adopted home of Florida. On ...
*
L.M. Montgomery
Lucy Maud Montgomery (November 30, 1874 – April 24, 1942), published as L. M. Montgomery, was a Canadian author best known for a collection of novels, essays, short stories, and poetry beginning in 1908 with '' Anne of Green Gables''. She ...
*
Christopher Morley
Christopher Darlington Morley (May 5, 1890 – March 28, 1957) was an American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet. He also produced stage productions for a few years and gave college lectures.''Online Literature''
Biography
Morley was bo ...
*
Alfred Noyes
Alfred Noyes CBE (16 September 188025 June 1958) was an English poet, short-story writer and playwright.
Early years
Noyes was born in Wolverhampton, England the son of Alfred and Amelia Adams Noyes. When he was four, the family moved to Abe ...
*
Mary O'Hara
Mary O'Hara (born 12 May 1935) is an Irish soprano and harpist from County Sligo. She gained attention on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Her recordings of that period influenced a generation of Irish female singer ...
*
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, scie ...
*
Piers Paul Read
Piers Paul Read FRSL (born 7 March 1941) is a British novelist, historian and biographer. He was first noted in 1974 for a book of reportage, '' Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors'', later adapted as a feature film and a documentary. Read ...
*
Steven Rosenberg
Steven A. Rosenberg (born 2 August 1940) is an American cancer researcher and surgeon, chief of Surgery at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland and a Professor of Surgery at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences an ...
*
Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy
Princess Amélie Rives Troubetzkoy (August 23, 1863 – June 15, 1945) was an American author of novels, poetry, and plays. ''The Quick or the Dead?'' (1888), her first novel, which sold 300,000 copies, created more of a sensation than any of her ...
*
Dalton Trumbo
James Dalton Trumbo (December 9, 1905 – September 10, 1976) was an American screenwriter who scripted many award-winning films, including ''Roman Holiday'' (1953), ''Exodus'', ''Spartacus'' (both 1960), and ''Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo'' (1944) ...
*
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...
*
Forrest Wilson
Robert Forrest Wilson (January 20, 1883 in Warren, Ohio – May 9, 1942 in Weston, Connecticut) was an American author and journalist. He won the 1942 Pulitzer Prize for his biography, ''Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe''. ...
*
Sir Samuel White Baker
Sir Samuel White Baker, KCB, FRS, FRGS (8 June 1821 – 30 December 1893) was an English explorer, officer, naturalist, big game hunter, engineer, writer and abolitionist. He also held the titles of Pasha and Major-General in the Ottoman ...
See also
*
History of books
The history of books became an acknowledged academic discipline in the 1980s. Contributors to the discipline include specialists from the fields of textual scholarship, codicology, bibliography, philology, palaeography, art history, social hi ...
References
External links
Brief history of J. B. Lippincott Company at Lippincott Williams & Wilkins"Joseph Wharton Lippincott, Jr." Princeton University memorial
J. B. Lippincott Company Records Historical Society of Pennsylvania
The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is a long-established research facility, based in Philadelphia. It is a repository for millions of historic items ranging across rare books, scholarly monographs, family chronicles, maps, press reports and v ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lippincott, J. B. and Co.
Book publishing companies based in Pennsylvania
American companies established in 1836
American companies disestablished in 1990
1836 establishments in Pennsylvania
Defunct book publishing companies of the United States
Companies based in Philadelphia
Publishing companies established in 1836