History
Founded in 1927, by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, the house made some of its first literary waves when it defended its U.S. publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses in court.
Now publishing everything under the sun, Random House moved into the children’s market as far back as the 1930s and, in 1960, made one of its most significant acquisitions, buying Alfred A. Knopf. (Knopf, now an imprint at Random, remains one of the most widely-recognized literary imprints in the business, publishing such luminaries as John Cheever, Willa Cather and John Updike, along with more recent heavy hitters like Cormac McCarthy and Alice Munro.)
On the corporate front, Random House has had a number of owners before it was acquired by Bertelsmann. In the 1960s RCA was its parent company and then, in the 1980s, Advance Publications. The house now has outposts around the globe -- it is headquartered in New York City -– including offices in Canada, the U.K. and India.
Notable Imprints
As every big publisher is broken down into imprints -- many have divisions which are then broken down into imprints -- here are some of the notable ones at Random House:
- Doubleday Broadway -- Known for commercial fiction, and some literary fiction, this division houses such imprints as Spiegel & Grau, Broadway Books and Nan A. Talese. Some of its many authors include Margaret Atwood (Nan A. Talese); Suze Orman (Spiegel & Grau); Mitch Albom (Broadway Books); and John Grisham (Doubleday).
- Alfred A. Knopf -- This division houses the high literary imprint Knopf (mentioned above) along with imprints like Everyman’s Library (which does classics); Pantheon (which does a mix of literary fiction and non-fiction, as well as graphic novels); and the paperback imprint, Vintage. In addition to the Knopf authors, writers like Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon) and Ha Jin (Pantheon) are published through the division.
- Bantam Dell -- A big publisher of commercial fiction this division is made up of the two titular imprints and publishes such bestsellers as Thomas Harris, Sophie Kinsella and Danielle Steel.
- Crown Publishing Group -- This includes imprints like Clarkson Potter (which is known for titles with high production values like cookbooks and craft books), the versatile Three Rivers Press (which publishes everything from parenting books to general fiction) and both Crown (which also publishes a wide swath of titles) and Crown Business (which, as you can imagine, publishes business titles). Its authors include Max Brooks (Crown); Cathie Black (Crown Business); and Alice Waters (Clarkson Potter).