Bantam Books is an American

publishing house Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

owned entirely by parent company

Random House Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the foll ...

, a subsidiary of

Penguin Random House Penguin Random House Limited is a British-American multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, with the merger of Penguin Books and Random House. Penguin Books was or ...

; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine, with funding from Grosset & Dunlap and Curtis Publishing Company. It has since been purchased several times by companies including National General, Carl Lindner's American Financial and, most recently,

Bertelsmann The Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, commonly known as Bertelsmann (), is a German privately held company, private multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation based in Gütersloh, North Rhine-Westphalia, ...

, which in 1986 purchased what had grown to become the Bantam Doubleday Dell publishing group. Bertelsmann purchased Random House in 1998, and in 1999 merged the Bantam and Dell imprints (amongst other mergers within the sprawling publishing house) to become the Bantam Dell publishing imprint. In 2010, the Bantam Dell division was consolidated with

Ballantine Books Ballantine Books is a major American book publisher that is a subsidiary of German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Ballantine was founded in 1952 by Ian Ballantine with his wife, Betty Ballantine. Ballantine was acquired by Random House in ...

(founded in 1952 by Bantam co-founders Ian and Betty Ballantine) to form the Ballantine Bantam Dell group within Random House. By no later than February 2015, Bantam Books had re-emerged as a stand-alone imprint within Random House; as of 2023, it continues to publish as the Bantam imprint, again grouped in a renamed Ballantine division within Random House. Bantam began as a mass market publisher, mostly of reprints of hardcover books, with some original paperbacks as well. It expanded into both trade paperback and hardcover books, including original works, often reprinted in house as mass-market editions.

History

The company was failing when Oscar Dystel, who had previously worked at

Esquire Esquire (, ; abbreviated Esq.) is usually a courtesy title. In the United Kingdom, ''esquire'' historically was a title of respect accorded to men of higher social rank, particularly members of the landed gentry above the rank of gentleman ...

and as editor on Coronet magazine was hired in 1954 to manage it. By the end of the next year the company was profitable. Dystel retired as chairman in 1980. By that time Bantam was the largest publisher of paperbacks, had over 15% of the market, and exceeded 100 million in sales. The company was involved in an important Supreme Court case, Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan in 1963. Bantam Books was prevented from distributing some of its publications in Rhode Island by a state commission called the Rhode Island Commission to Encourage Morality in Youth. The commission, headed by the Rhode Island Attorney General, would essentially blacklist books and magazines it deemed "objectionable" for sale, threatening distributors with publicity and reputational harm. Bantam Books sued, arguing this commission violated freedom of press protections and amounted to illegal censorship without due process. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of Bantam Books, deciding that the commission's blacklisting practice constituted an unlawful prior restraint on free expression in violation of the First Amendment. The Court held that any system of prior censorship on publications "strikes at the very foundation of freedom of expression" and cannot be enforced unless regulated by precise rules with procedural safeguards. This was an influential decision reinforcing First Amendment protections against government censorship of published materials. In 1964, Grosset & Dunlap acquired full ownership of Bantam from Curtis. In 1968, Grosset & Dunlap was acquired by conglomerate National General, run by Gene Klein. National General was acquired by American Financial Group in 1973. American Financial sold Bantam to the Italian firm IFI in 1974.

acquired half of Bantam in 1977 and assumed full ownership in 1980. IN 1986, Bantam began publishing audiobooks. In 1986, Bertelsmann acquired Doubleday & Company and created the holding Bantam Doubleday

Dell Dell Inc. is an American technology company that develops, sells, repairs, and supports personal computers (PCs), Server (computing), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals including printers and webcam ...

. In 1998, Bertelsmann acquired

from Advance Publications; Random House became the name of the overall holding company of the various publishing imprints. In 1999, Bertelsmann merged some of the many publishing units it held in Random House, including a merger of Bantam with Dell Publishing, forming the Bantam Dell publishing imprint. Bantam Dell became part of the Random House publishing group in 2008.

was merged with Bantam Dell in 2010. In 2013, Random House merged with Penguin to form

Books published

Bantam has published the entire original run of the "

Choose Your Own Adventure ''Choose Your Own Adventure'' is a series of children's gamebooks where each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character's actio ...

" series of

children's books A child () is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty. The term may also refer to an unborn human being. In English-speaking countries, the legal definition of ''chi ...

, as well as the first original novels based upon the ''

Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the Star Trek: The Original Series, series of the same name and became a worldwide Popular culture, pop-culture Cultural influence of ...

'' franchise, publishing about a dozen such books between 1970 and 1982, when the license was taken over by

Pocket Books Pocket Books is a division of Simon & Schuster that primarily publishes paperback books. History Pocket Books produced the first Paperback#Mass market paperback, mass-market, pocket-sized paperback books in the United States in early 1939 and ...

. Bantam also published a dozen volumes of

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

adaptations of scripts from '' Star Trek: The Original Series.'' Bantam was the former American paperback publisher of '' The Guinness Book of Records''. Another series was "Bantam War Book" from the 1970s to the 1990s, with the majority of books from World War II, but also from Vietnam, Korea and other conflicts. Other series include Bantam Classics, the Bantam Spectra science fiction imprint, the juvenile Skylark imprint, the Bantam Air & Space imprint, and editions of Shakespeare.

Bantam Classics

The series was started in 1958. It reprints mostly public domain, unabridged classic books, intended to increase backlist sales and reintroduce the works to new audiences. More than a hundred books have been released in the series. Like competing editions, some Bantam Classics are printed with an introduction from a literary critic, and in the case of ''Moby Dick'', with a selection of critical essays on the novel appended as well.

Authors

Authors originally published exclusively or significantly by Bantam include: *

Maya Angelou Maya Angelou ( ; born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credi ...

Isaac Asimov Isaac Asimov ( ; – April 6, 1992) was an Russian-born American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. H ...

* Jean Auel * Louis L'Amour *

Ray Bradbury Ray Douglas Bradbury ( ; August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American author and screenwriter. One of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers, he worked in a variety of genres, including fantasy, science fiction, Horror fiction, horr ...

* Ernest Callenbach * Alan Campbell * Philip K. Dick * S. S. Van Dine *

James Dobson James Clayton Dobson Jr. (born April 21, 1936) is an American evangelicalism, evangelical Christian author, psychologist, and founder of Focus on the Family (FotF), which he led from 1977 until 2010. In the 1980s, he was ranked as one of the m ...

* Stephen R. Donaldson *

Ian Fleming Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer, best known for his postwar ''James Bond'' series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his ...

* Frederick Forsyth *

Lisa Gardner Lisa Gardner (born 1972) is a #1 ''New York Times'' bestselling American novelist. She is the author of more than 20 suspense novels, published in more than 30 countries. She began her career writing romantic suspense under the pseudonym Alicia ...

Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator and author. He is an Oxford fellow, emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Simonyi Professor for the Publ ...

* David Gemmell * Elizabeth George * William Gibson *

John Glenn John Herschel Glenn Jr. (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016) was an American Marine Corps aviator, astronaut, businessman, and politician. He was the third American in space and the first to orbit the Earth, circling it three times in 1 ...

* Daniel Goleman * Graham Greene *

John Grisham John Ray Grisham Jr. (; born February 8, 1955) is an American novelist, lawyer, and former politician, known for his best-selling legal thrillers. According to the Academy of Achievement, American Academy of Achievement, Grisham has written 37 ...

* Laurell K. Hamilton * Thomas Harris * Stephen Hawking * Mo Hayder * Hermann Hesse * Tracy Hickman * Tami Hoag * Robin Hobb * Kay Hooper * Iris Johansen * Shmuel Katz * Dean Koontz * Emilie Loring * Lois Lowry *

Robert Ludlum Robert Ludlum (May 25, 1927 – March 12, 2001) was an American author of 27 Thriller (genre), thriller novels, best known as the creator of Jason Bourne from the original ''Bourne (novel series), The Bourne Trilogy'' series. The number of copi ...

* Duncan Lunan * William March * Shirley MacLaine * George R. R. Martin * Malachi Martin *

Anne McCaffrey Anne Inez McCaffrey (1 April 1926 – 21 November 2011) was an American writer known for the ''Dragonriders of Pern'' science fiction series. She was the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction (Best Novella, ''Weyr Search'', 1968) an ...

* Andy McDermott * Terence McKenna * Farley Mowat * Joseph Murphy * Michael Palmer * Robert M. Pirsig * Daniel Quinn * Tom Robbins * Jane Roberts * Alan Rodgers * J.D. Salinger * Alice Schroeder * H. Norman Schwarzkopf * Jerry Seinfeld *

Adam Smith Adam Smith (baptised 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the field of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as the "father of economics"——— or ...

* Lori Nelson Spielman * John Steinbeck * Danielle Steel *

Neal Stephenson Neal Town Stephenson (born October 31, 1959) is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk, and baroque. Stephenson's work explores mathemati ...

* Bruce Sterling * Rex Stout * William Tenn *

Margaret Weis Margaret Edith Weis (; born March 16, 1948) is an American fantasy and science fiction author of dozens of novels and short stories. At TSR, Inc., she teamed with Tracy Hickman to create the ''Dragonlance'' role-playing game (RPG) world. She is f ...

* Elie Wiesel * Victor Villasenor

Books originally published by Bantam

References

External links

* {{Authority control Book publishing companies based in New York (state) Publishing companies based in New York City Publishing companies established in 1945 1945 establishments in New York (state) Random House