Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by

Roger Williams Straus Jr. Roger Williams Straus Jr. (January 3, 1917 – May 25, 2004) was co-founder and chairman of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, a New York City, New York book publishing company, and member of the Guggenheim family. Biography Early life Straus was born in ...

and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made h ...

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...

s, and

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

s. the publisher is a division of

Macmillan MacMillan, Macmillan, McMillen or McMillan may refer to: People * McMillan (surname) * Clan MacMillan, a Highland Scottish clan * Harold Macmillan, British statesman and politician * James MacMillan, Scottish composer * William Duncan MacMillan ...

, whose parent company is the German publishing conglomerate Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.

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 ''Yank, the Army Weekly'' was a weekly magazine published by the United States military during World War II. History The idea for the magazine came from Egbert White, who had worked on the newspaper Stars and Stripes during World War I. He ...

'', 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 ''Christ Stopped at Eboli'' ( it, Cristo si è fermato a Eboli) is a memoir by Carlo Levi, published in 1945, giving an account of his exile from 1935-1936 to Grassano and Aliano, remote towns in southern Italy, in the region of Lucania which is ...

'' by

Carlo Levi Carlo Levi () (29 November 1902 – 4 January 1975) was an Italian painter, writer, activist, communist, and doctor. He is best known for his book '' Cristo si è fermato a Eboli'' (''Christ Stopped at Eboli''), published in 1945, a memoir of h ...

and other rising Italian authors: Alberto Moravia,

Giovanni Guareschi Giovannino Oliviero Giuseppe Guareschi (; 1 May 1908 – 22 July 1968) was an Italian journalist, cartoonist and humorist whose best known creation is the priest Don Camillo. Life and career Giovannino Guareschi was born into a middle-class famil ...

and

Cesare Pavese Cesare Pavese ( , ; 9 September 1908 – 27 August 1950) was an Italian novelist, poet, short story writer, translator, literary critic, and essayist. He is often referred to as one of the most influential Italian writers of his time. Early li ...

. Farrar, Straus also poached or lured away authors from other publishers—one was Edmund Wilson, who was unhappy with

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

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 Stanley may refer to: Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''Stanley'' (1972 film), an American horror film * ''Stanley'' (1984 film), an Australian comedy * ''Stanley'' (1999 film), an animated short * ''Stanley'' (1956 TV series) ...

, 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 Robert Giroux (April 8, 1914 – September 5, 2008) was an American book editor and publisher. Starting his editing career with Harcourt, Brace & Co., he was hired away to work for Roger W. Straus, Jr. at Farrar & Straus in 1955, where he becam ...

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 ''The Catcher in the Rye'' is an American novel by J. D. Salinger that was partially published in serial form from 1945–46 before being novelized in 1951. Originally intended for adults, it is often read by adolescents for its themes of angst ...

''. Giroux brought many literary authors with him including

Thomas Merton Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968) was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. On May 26, 1949, he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood and giv ...

John Berryman John Allyn McAlpin Berryman (born John Allyn Smith, Jr.; October 25, 1914 – January 7, 1972) was an American poet and scholar. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and is considered a key figure in th ...

Robert Lowell Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the ''Mayflower''. His family, past and present, were important subjects i ...

, Flannery O'Connor,

Jack Kerouac Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Of French-Canadian a ...

, Peter Taylor, Randall Jarrell,

T.S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National B ...

, and

Bernard Malamud Bernard Malamud (April 26, 1914 – March 18, 1986) was an American novelist and short story writer. Along with Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, and Philip Roth, he was one of the best known American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseba ...

. 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 Holtzbrinck Publishing Group () is a privately held German company based in Stuttgart which owns publishing companies worldwide. Through Macmillan Publishers, it is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies. In 2015, it merg ...

. Straus offered FSG to the Holtzbrinck family because of their reputation for publishing serious works of literature.

21st century

Jonathan Galassi Jonathan Galassi (born 1949 in Seattle, Washington) has served as the president and publisher of ''Farrar, Straus and Giroux'' and is currently the Chairman and Executive Editor. Early life Galassi was born in Seattle (his father worked as an ...

served as both president and publisher until 2018. Andrew Mandel joined in 2004 as 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. Other notable editors include

Sean McDonald Sean McDonald is executive editor and vice president of Farrar, Straus and Giroux and publisher of its experimental imprint, MCD/FSG. Career Authors he has edited include Sloane Crosley, Junot Díaz, Nuruddin Farah, James Frey, Gorillaz, Nicola ...

Daphne Durham Daphne (; ; el, Δάφνη, , ), a minor figure in Greek mythology, is a naiad, a variety of female nymph associated with fountains, wells, springs, streams, brooks and other bodies of freshwater. There are several versions of the myth in whi ...

, and

Alex Star Alex is a given name. It can refer to a shortened version of Alexander, Alexandra, Alexis. People Multiple *Alex Brown (disambiguation), multiple people *Alex Gordon (disambiguation), multiple people *Alex Harris (disambiguation), multiple peop ...

. 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.

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 is joined by Daphne Durham, formerly editor-in-chief and publisher of Amazon Publishing, as executive director. * FSG Originals * Hill and Wang publishes books of academic interest and specializes in history. Its authors include

Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular ...

William Cronon William Cronon (born September 11, 1954 in New Haven, Connecticut) is an environmental historian and the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madi ...

Langston Hughes James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 – May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hug ...

, and

Elie Wiesel Elie Wiesel (, born Eliezer Wiesel ''Eliezer Vizel''; September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored Elie Wiesel b ...

. * 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 Beryl Markham (née Clutterbuck; 26 October 1902 – 3 August 1986) was a Kenyan aviator born in England (one of the first bush flying, bush pilots), adventurer, racehorse trainer and author. She was the first person to fly solo, non-stop acros ...

, Guy Davenport,

A. J. Liebling Abbott Joseph Liebling (October 18, 1904 – December 28, 1963) was an American journalist who was closely associated with ''The New Yorker'' from 1935 until his death. He was known for, among other things, the aphorism "Freedom of the press bel ...

Margaret Visser Margaret Visser (born May 11, 1940) is a writer and broadcaster who lives in Toronto, Paris, and South West France. Her subject matter is the history, anthropology, and mythology of everyday life. Biography Born in South Africa, she attended scho ...

Wendell Berry Wendell Erdman Berry (born August 5, 1934) is an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. Closely identified with rural Kentucky, Berry developed many of his agrarian themes in the early essays of ' ...

, and

M. F. K. Fisher Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher (July 3, 1908 – June 22, 1992) was an American food writer. She was a founder of the Napa Valley Wine Library. Over her lifetime she wrote 27 books, including a translation of ''The Physiology of Taste'' by Brillat-S ...

Former imprints

* Sarah Crichton Books publishes books with a slightly commercial bent. The imprint launched with Cathleen Falsani's ''The God Factor'' in 2006.

Ishmael Beah Ishmael Beah (born 23 November 1980)UNICEF''Youth leadership profiles'' unicef.org; retrieved 15 February 2007. is a Sierra Leonean author and human rights activist who rose to fame with his acclaimed memoir, ''A Long Way Gone''. His novel ''Radi ...

's '' A Long Way Gone'' was a bestseller and a

Starbucks Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It is the world's largest coffeehouse chain. As of November 2021, the company had 33,833 stores in 80 c ...

-featured book in 2007. *

Faber and Faber Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel B ...

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 David Auburn (born 30 November 1969) is an American playwright, screenwriter and theatre director. He is best known for his 2000 play '' Proof'', which won the 2001 Tony Award for Best Play and Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He also wrote the screen ...

Margaret Edson Margaret "Maggie" Edson (born July 4, 1961) is an American playwright. She is a recipient of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play '' Wit''. She has been a public school teacher since 1992. Background and education Edson was born in Was ...

Doug Wright Douglas Wright (born December 20, 1962) is an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2004 for his play ''I Am My Own Wife''. Early years Wright was born in Dallas, Texas. He attended and ...

, Richard Greenberg,

Tom Stoppard Sir Tom Stoppard (born , 3 July 1937) is a Czech born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and politi ...

David Hare David Hare may refer to: *David Hare (philanthropist) (1775–1842), Scottish philanthropist *David Hare (artist) (1917–1992), American sculptor and photographer *David Hare (playwright) (born 1947), English playwright and theatre and film direc ...

Neil LaBute Neil N. LaBute (born March 19, 1963) is an American playwright, film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is best-known for a play that he wrote and later adapted for film, ''In the Company of Men'' (1997), which won awards from the Sundance Fi ...

, Peter Conrad, Martin Eisenstadt and Courtney Love. * Scientific American / FSG, led by Amanda Moon, publishes non-fiction popular science books for the general reader. Its authors include

Jesse Bering Jesse Michael Bering (born May 6, 1975) is an American psychologist, writer, and academic. He is a professor in Science Communication at the University of Otago (where he serves as Director of the Centre for Science Communication), as well as a ...

Daniel Chamovitz Daniel Chamovitz (דניאל חיימוביץ; born April 18, 1963 ) is an American-born plant geneticist and the 7th President of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel. Previously he was Dean of the George S. Wise Faculty of ...

, Kevin Dutton, and

Caleb Scharf Caleb Asa Scharf is a British-born astronomer and the director of the multidisciplinary Columbia Astrobiology Center at Columbia University, New York. He received a B.Sc. in Physics from Durham University and a PhD in Astronomy from the Univers ...

. * Noonday Press *Melanie Kroupa Books (children's book imprint, 2000-2008)

Bibliography

Books for Young Readers

FSG Books for Young Readers publishes

winners

Madeleine L'Engle Madeleine L'Engle DStJ (; November 29, 1918 – September 6, 2007) was an American writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and young adult fiction, including ''A Wrinkle in Time'' and its sequels: ''A Wind in the Door'', ''A Swiftly Tilting Plan ...

(1980), William Steig (1983),

Louis Sachar Louis Sachar ( ; born March 20, 1954) is an American young-adult mystery-comedy author. He is best known for the ''Wayside School'' series and the novel ''Holes''. ''Holes'' won the 1998 U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature

(1998), and Polly Horvath (2003). Books for Young Readers also publishes

Natalie Babbitt Natalie Zane Babbitt (née Moore; July 28, 1932 – October 31, 2016) was an American writer and illustrator of children's books. Her 1975 novel '' Tuck Everlasting'' was adapted into two feature films and a Broadway musical. She received th ...

Roald Dahl Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter ace of Norwegian descent. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide. Dahl has be ...

Jack Gantos Jack Gantos (born July 2, 1951) is an American author of children's books. He is best known for the fictional characters Rotten Ralph and Joey Pigza. Rotten Ralph is a cat who stars in twenty picture books written by Gantos and illustrated by ...

, George Selden, Uri Shulevitz, Ozge Samanci, and

Peter Sis Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...

Awards

Notable authors

Staff

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

References

External links

* *
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers

Work in Progress, an Online Magazine by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Farrar, Straus & Giroux Collection of Isaac Bashevis Singer Papers
at the Harry Ransom Center at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

* {{Authority control Book publishing companies based in New York (state) Publishing companies based in New York City Publishing companies established in 1946 1946 establishments in New York (state) Holtzbrinck Publishing Group

Founding

Merger

Sale

21st century

Name history

Current imprints

Former imprints

Bibliography

Books for Young Readers

Awards

Notable authors

Staff

References

Further reading

External links