American Book Company
The American Book Company (ABC) was an educational book publisher in the United States that specialized in elementary school, secondary school and collegiate-level textbooks. It is best known for publishing the McGuffey Readers, which sold 120 million copies between 1836 and 1960.
Also recorded as ABC · ABCo
American Book Company
C. D. Younge, edited by Henry Drisler, LL.D. published by the American Book Company, Chicago, Cincinati, New York. · An English-Greek Lexicon · Public domain
- Founded
- 1890
- Headquarters
- United States
- Products
- textbook
- Dissolved
- 1981
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
The American Book Company (ABC) was an educational book publisher in the United States that specialized in elementary school, secondary school and collegiate-level textbooks. It is best known for publishing the McGuffey Readers, which sold 120 million copies between 1836 and 1960.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for American Book Company. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
gnd · 1079531661 · wikidata · Q4743225
In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Status — Defunct • Founded — 1890 • Founder — Van Antwerp, Bragg and Co., A.S. Barnes & Co., D. Appleton and Co., and Ivison, Blakeman and Co. • Successor — D. C. Heath and Company • Country — United States • Publications — books
History
History
• Illustration — American Book Company, letter envelope 25 September 1916 American Book Company was formed in 1890 by the consolidation of Van Antwerp, Bragg and Co., A.S. Barnes & Co., D. Appleton and Co., and Ivison, Blakeman and Co. It was acquired by Litton Industries in 1967 and existed as a division of Litton Educational Publishing, Inc. until being sold to the International Thomson Organization in 1981. Thomson then sold its American Book Company K-12 assets to D. C. Heath and Company in 1981. The company was absorbed into D. C. Heath and ceased to exist as an imprint. Any remaining K-12 assets of the American Book Company are now owned by Houghton Mifflin (now Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), which acquired D. C. Heath and Company in 1995. Many of the college level textbook rights of ABC/Litton were sold by International Thomson as well, to Van Nostrand Reinhold, though some remained under the Wadsworth imprint at Thomson, which is now Cengage Learning.
Identity
Identity
American Book Company is associated with United States. Recorded from 1890.
US-NY(1891) p631 NYC, AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY
This file is from the Mechanical Curator collection, a set of over 1 million images scanned from out-of-copyright books and released to Flickr Commons by the British Library. View image on Flickr Vie
Institutional history
Dated record
Institutional history
Explore 1890–1981
The full dated record · 3 entries
1890
American Book Company established.
1890
American Book Company is recorded from 1890.
1981
American Book Company ceased.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
- United States
American Writers Series
Beginning in 1934 and continuing into the 1940s, the American Book Company published a 23-volume American Writers Series with Harry H. Clark as the general editor. Each volume had one or two editors and consisted of "representative selections, with introduction, bibliography, and notes". The volume on Benjamin Franklin drew a warm tribute from Carl Van Doren to Frank Luther Mott.
Primary material
Documents and archives
authority file
- Gemeinsame Normdatei 1079531661, American Book Company (New York, NY).
General reference · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
reference work
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q4743225: American Book Company
Reputable secondary · Wikidata
Literature
Literature
The American Book Company Purchases the Harper Tents, Journal of Education, 1899
American Book Company — World Population and Future Resources, Population, 1952
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.The Paradigm Company. McGuffey Readers World.
- 2.Syracuse University Library. American Book Company Records.
- 3.Betsky, Seymour. American Literature in the Marketplace. Literature and Cultural Inquiry. Higher Education Quarterly. Blackwell Publishing. 37. 4. 320–340. September 1983. 10.1111/j.1468-2273.1983.tb02009.x.
- 4.Kleinfield, N. r. Litton Plans Publishing Group Sale. The New York Times. 1981-01-29. 0362-4331.
- 5.Great Traditions in Ethics. January 1953.
- 6.Cengage Learning. Great Traditions in Ethics.
- 7.Stewart, Randall. Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Whitman, Edited by Harry H. Clark (Book Review). New England Quarterly. 7. 1. 737. 1 January 1934. 10.2307/359199.
- 8.Faust, C. H. Reviewed works: Benjamin Franklin: Representative Selections, with Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes by Frank Luther Mott and Chester E. Jorgenson; Benjamin Franklin, Englishman and American by Verner Winslow Crane. Modern Philology. 35. 3. 339–342. 1938. 10.1086/388322.
- 9.Holt, W. Stull. Reviewed works: John Lothrop Motley: Representative Selections, with Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes edited by Chester Penn Higby, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin, and B. T. Schantz, Instructor in English, Colgate University; Francis Parkman: Representative Selections, with Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes by Wilbur L. Schramm, Assistant Professor of English, University of Iowa. The American Historical Review. 47. 1. 1941. 10.1086/ahr/47.1.153.
- 10.HERMAN MELVILLE, by Willard Thorpe (Book Review). 1939.
- 11.WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, Edited by Tremaine McDowell (Book Review). 1935.
- 12.THOMAS PAINE, Edited by Harry Hayden Clark. 1944.
- 13.MARK TWAIN, Edited by Fred Lewis Pattee (Book Review). 1935.
- 14.Letter quoted on the Frank Luther Mott page
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
authority file
Gemeinsame Normdatei 1079531661, American Book Company (New York, NY).Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 16 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Publishers and printers
5,459 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- American Aviation Historical SocietyOrganisation
- American Bankruptcy InstituteOrganisation
- American Baptist Publication SocietyOrganisation
- American Bible SocietyOrganisation
- American Bryological and Lichenological SocietyOrganisation
- American Center of Oriental ResearchOrganisation
- American Chemical SocietyOrganisation
- American College of GastroenterologyOrganisation
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own an object connected with American Book Company?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.