Farrar, Straus and Giroux is an American book publishing company, founded in 1946 by Roger Williams Straus Jr. and John C. Farrar. FSG is known for publishing literary books, and its authors have won numerous awards, including Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and Nobel Peace Prizes. The publisher is currently a division of 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, 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 awhile. 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, Giovanni 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
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. Jonathan Galassi is president and publisher. 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. Other notable editors include Sean McDonald, Ileene Smith, Alex Star, Amanda Moon, and Sarah Crichton. 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
Farrar, Straus and Young
Farrar, Straus and Cudahy - acquired L.C. Page & Co. in 1957
Farrar, Straus, and Company after Cudahy left the firm.
Sarah Crichton Books publishes 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.
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.
