Viking Press (formally Viking Penguin, also listed as Viking Books) is an American

publishing company 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 by

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 was founded in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheimer and then acquired by the

Penguin Group Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media company, media Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a Mergers and acquisitions, mer ...

in 1975.

Imprints

* Viking Kestrel * Viking Adult, who got in legal trouble in 1946 due to John Steinbeck's bold eulogy, and fell out of public favor in 1947 * Viking children's Books * Viking Portable Library * Pamela Dorman Books

Viking Children's

In 1933, Viking Press founded a department called Junior Books to publish children's books. The first book published was '' The Story About Ping'' in 1933 under editor May Massee. Junior Books was later renamed Viking Children's Books. Viking Kestrel was one of its

imprints Imprint or imprinting may refer to: Entertainment * ''Imprint'' (TV series), Canadian television series * "Imprint" (''Masters of Horror''), episode of TV show ''Masters of Horror'' * ''Imprint'' (film), a 2007 independent drama/thriller film ...

. Its books have won the Newbery and Caldecott Medals, and include such books as '' The Twenty-One Balloons'', written and illustrated by William Pene du Bois (1947, Newbery medal winner for 1948), '' Corduroy'', '' Make Way for Ducklings'', '' The Stinky Cheese Man'' by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith (1993), '' The Outsiders'', '' Pippi Longstocking'', and '' The Story of Ferdinand''. Its paperbacks are now published by

Puffin Books Puffin Books is a longstanding children's imprint of the British publishers Penguin Books. Since the 1960s, it has been among the largest publishers of children's books in the UK and much of the English-speaking world. The imprint now belongs to ...

, which includes the Speak and Firebird imprints. In 2023, Tamar Brazis was named v-p and publisher of Viking Children's Books.

Viking Critical Library

The Viking Critical Library offers academic editions of literary texts. Like

W. W. Norton W. W. Norton & Company is an American publishing company based in New York City. Established in 1923, it has been owned wholly by its employees since the early 1960s. The company is known for its Norton Anthologies (particularly '' The Norton ...

's ''Norton Critical Editions'', all titles print the text alongside a selection of critical essays and contextual documents (including relevant extracts from the author's oeuvre). The series, which only saw sporadic publications in the late 1970s and late 1990s, has been dormant since 1998, with no new titles released since then. However, a number of existing titles remain in print. ;Titles

Notable authors

* Abdullah II,

King of Jordan The king of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan () is the monarchical head of state of Jordan. He serves as the head of the Jordanian monarchy—the Hashemites, Hashemite dynasty. The king is addressed as Majesty, His Majesty (). Jordan is a const ...

Kingsley Amis Sir Kingsley William Amis (16 April 1922 – 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, short stories, radio and television scripts, and works of social crit ...

Sherwood Anderson Sherwood Anderson (September 13, 1876 – March 8, 1941) was an American novelist and short story writer, known for subjective and self-revealing works. Self-educated, he rose to become a successful copywriter and business owner in Cleveland and ...

Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt (born Johanna Arendt; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a German and American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theory, political theorists of the twentieth century. Her work ...

* Peter S. Beagle *

Antony Beevor Sir Antony James Beevor, (born 14 December 1946) is a British military historian. He has published several popular historical works, mainly on the Second World War, the Spanish Civil War, and most recently the Russian Revolution and Civil War. ...

Saul Bellow Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; June 10, 1915April 5, 2005) was a Canadian-American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only write ...

Ludwig Bemelmans Ludwig Bemelmans (April 27, 1898 – October 1, 1962) was an Austrian and American writer and illustrator of children's books and adult novels. He is known best for the ''Madeline'' picture books. Six were published, the first in 1939. Early li ...

* Dan Blum * T. C. Boyle * Geraldine Brooks * Daniel James Brown * William S. Burroughs * Lan Cao *

Rosanne Cash Rosanne Cash (born May 24, 1955) is an American singer-songwriter and author. She is the eldest daughter of country musician Johnny Cash and his first wife, Vivian Cash. Although Cash is often classified as a country artist, her music draws f ...

* Ferreira de Castro *

J. M. Coetzee John Maxwell Coetzee Order of Australia, AC Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, FRSL Order of Mapungubwe, OMG (born 9 February 1940) is a South African and Australian novelist, essayist, linguist, and translator. The recipient of the 2003 ...

Leonard Cohen Leonard Norman Cohen (September 21, 1934November 7, 2016) was a Canadian songwriter, singer, poet, and novelist. Themes commonly explored throughout his work include faith and mortality, isolation and depression, betrayal and redemption, soc ...

Roald Dahl Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British author of popular children's literature and short stories, a poet, screenwriter and a wartime Flying ace, fighter ace. His books have sold more than 300 million copies ...

* Theodore Draper *

Lawrence Durrell Lawrence George Durrell (; 27 February 1912 – 7 November 1990) was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer. He was the eldest brother of naturalist and writer Gerald Durrell. Born in India to British colonial pa ...

* Kim Edwards *

Daniel Ellsberg Daniel Ellsberg (April 7, 1931June 16, 2023) was an American political activist, economist, and United States military analyst. While employed by the RAND Corporation, he precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released th ...

* Helen Fielding *

Frederick Forsyth Frederick McCarthy Forsyth ( ; 25 August 1938 – 9 June 2025) was an English novelist and journalist. He was best known for thrillers such as ''The Day of the Jackal'', ''The Odessa File'', ''The Fourth Protocol'', ''The Dogs of War (novel), ...

* Don Freeman *

Tana French Tana French (born 10 May 1973) is an American-Irish writer and theatrical actress. She is a longtime resident of Dublin, Ireland. Her debut novel '' In the Woods'' (2007), a psychological mystery, won the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity, and Barr ...

* Elizabeth George * Elizabeth Gilbert *

Rumer Godden Margaret Rumer Godden (10 December 1907 – 8 November 1998) was a British author of more than 60 fiction and non-fiction books. Nine of her works have been made into films, most notably ''Black Narcissus (novel), Black Narcissus'' in 194 ...

* Will Gompertz *

Graham Greene Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a re ...

* R. K. Narayan * Robert Greene *

Martha Grimes Martha Grimes (born May 2, 1931) is an American writer of detective fiction. She is best known for a series featuring Richard Jury, a Scotland Yard inspector, and Melrose Plant, an aristocrat turned amateur sleuth. Early life and education Marth ...

* S. E. Hinton *

David Irving David John Cawdell Irving (born 24 March 1938) is an English author and Holocaust denier who has written on the military and political history of World War II, especially Nazi Germany. He was found to be a Holocaust denier in a British court ...

Kristopher Jansma Kristopher Jansma () is an American fiction writer and essayist. Born in the Lincroft, New Jersey, Lincroft section of Middletown Township, New Jersey, he attended Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University. Career and accolades His short ...

James Weldon Johnson James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871June 26, 1938) was an American writer and civil rights activist. He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ...

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...

* Jan Karon * Ezra Jack Keats * Garrison Keillor * William Kennedy *

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 ...

Ken Kesey Ken Elton Kesey (; September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American novelist, essayist and Counterculture of the 1960s, countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies o ...

* Sue Monk Kidd *

Stephen King Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author. Dubbed the "King of Horror", he is widely known for his horror novels and has also explored other genres, among them Thriller (genre), suspense, crime fiction, crime, scienc ...

* Jamil Jan Kochai * D. H. Lawrence * Tobsha Learner * Rebecca Makkai *

Hilary Mantel Dame Hilary Mary Mantel ( ; born Thompson; 6 July 1952 – 22 September 2022) was a British writer whose work includes historical fiction, personal memoirs and short stories. Her first published novel, ''Every Day Is Mother's Day'', was releas ...

Peter Matthiessen Peter Matthiessen (May 22, 1927 – April 5, 2014) was an American novelist, naturalist, wilderness writer, zen teacher and onetime CIA agent. A co-founder of the literary magazine ''The Paris Review'', he is the only writer to have won the Nat ...

* Robert McCloskey * Terry McMillan *

Arthur Miller Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist and screenwriter in the 20th-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are '' All My Sons'' (1947), '' Death of a Salesman'' (1 ...

* Jojo Moyes * John Julius Norwich *

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...

Michelle Obama Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama ( Robinson; born January 17, 1964) is an American attorney and author who served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, being married to Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United Stat ...

Richard Osman Richard Osman (born 28 November 1970) is an English television presenter, producer, and novelist. He is the creator and former co-presenter of the BBC One television quiz show ''Pointless''. He has presented the BBC Two quiz shows ''Two Tribes ( ...

Octavio Paz Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1977 Jerusalem Prize, the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, a ...

Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychology, cognitive psychologist, psycholinguistics, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psycholo ...

Thomas Pynchon Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, Literary genre, genres and Theme (narrative), th ...

* Ruth Sawyer * Jon Scieszka *

Kate Seredy Kate Seredy (November 10, 1899 – March 7, 1975) was an American writer and illustrator of children's books. She won the Newbery Medal once, the Newbery Honor twice, the Caldecott Honor once, and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. Most of her bo ...

* Katherine Binney Shippen *

Upton Sinclair Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American author, muckraker journalist, and political activist, and the 1934 California gubernatorial election, 1934 Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party ...

* Wallace Stegner *

John Steinbeck John Ernst Steinbeck ( ; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social percep ...

Rex Stout Rex Todhunter Stout (; December 1, 1886–October 27, 1975) was an American writer noted for his detective fiction. His best-known characters are the detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin, who were featured in 33 novels and ...

August Strindberg Johan August Strindberg (; ; 22 January 184914 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist, and painter.Lane (1998), 1040. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg wrote more than 60 pla ...

* Simms Taback * Whitney Terrell * Barbara Tuchman * Carl Van Doren * William T. Vollmann *

David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 – September 12, 2008) was an American writer and professor who published novels, short stories, and essays. He is best known for his 1996 novel ''Infinite Jest'', which ''Time (magazine), Time'' magazine ...

* Rosemary Wells *

Rebecca West Dame Cecily Isabel Fairfield (21 December 1892 – 15 March 1983), known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, journalist, literary critic and travel writer. An author who wrote in many genres, West reviewed books ...

* Patrick White * Vikram Sampath

Notable editors

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Jacqueline Lee Kennedy Onassis ( ; July 28, 1929 – May 19, 1994) was an American writer, book editor, and socialite who served as the first lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963, as the wife of President John F. Kennedy. A popular f ...

, consulting editor * Wendy Wolf, vice president and associate editor, 1994-

Awards

* 10 Newbery Medals * 10 Caldecott Medals * 27 Newbery Honors * 33 Caldecott Honors * 1 American Book Award * 2 Coretta Scott King Awards * 3 Batcheldor Honors * 5 Christopher Medals * 2 Margaret A. Edwards Awards for authors S. E. Hinton and Richard Peck

References

External links

Viking Press overview
at

Penguin Penguins are a group of aquatic flightless birds from the family Spheniscidae () of the order Sphenisciformes (). They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. Only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is equatorial, with a sm ...

Viking Press history
at Penguin (page from August 28, 2006 stored by the Internet Archive)
Viking Children's Books overview
at Penguin

at Penguin (page from April 26, 2008 stored by the Internet Archive) {{Authority control Book publishing companies based in New York (state) Publishing companies based in New York City Publishing companies established in 1925 1925 establishments in New York City 1975 mergers and acquisitions Random House