Random House records, 1925-1999

1927-1965: Beginnings Bennet Cerf and Donald Klopfer founded Random House in 1927 two years after they had purchased the 109-volume Modern Library backlist for $200,000. The robust backlist–which included classics like Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, and The Picture of Dorian Gray–allowed the company to begin with a two-pronged mission: to reissue Modern Library classics and to publish works that were "random," falling outside the ambit of the classics. (See Reminiscences of Bennett Alfred Cerf, 1968).

In its first decade, Random House built a reputation as a daring and path-breaking American publisher in part on a landmark obscenity court case that resulted in the publication of the first widely available edition of James Joyce's Ulysses in 1934. (See Box Cat 20). This period also saw the company expand through the acquisition of rights to works of several prize-winning authors, including Isak Dinesen, William Faulkner, Edgar Snow, and Jean de Brunhoff in 1936.

As the company expanded its catalog, it also grew both geographically and generically, with the establishment of Random House Canada and the Textbook and College Book division in 1944. The latter put out the American College Dictionary in 1947. In 1959, the company went public, a decision catalyzed in part by the retirement plans Cerf and Klopfer, which included concern about the taxation of their estates. 220,000 shares were made available to the public at $11.25 per share, a move that financed Random House's acquisition of Knopf the following year for $3 million.

A year later, the company acquired Pantheon books, which aimed to introduce an American audience to European works, such as the works of Michel Foucault, Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex and Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago (1958), which became a commercial hit in the United States.

Two editors who would help shape the publishing house's catalog and culture join the company during this period: Jason Epstein and Jim Silberman. Epstein came to Random House after leaving Doubleday when they refused to publish Vladmir Nabokov's Lolita. He served as editorial director from 1976 until 1995 and edited the works of Nabokov, Norman Mailer, and Gore Vidal, among others. In 1963, Jim Silberman joined as a senior editor. Silberman, who would later go on to become the editor-in-chief and publisher of adult trade books until 1975, was responsible for publishing the works of James Baldwin (See Box 726) and Hunter S. Thompson (See Box 742).

1965-1980: Seeds of Expansion The acquisition of Knopf marked the beginning of an era characterized by major changes. It signaled the beginning of the tenure of a third editor that would go on to be closely associated with Random House: Robert Gottlieb. Gottlieb, remembered now in part for being Toni Morrison's editor, worked at Knopf from 1968 until 1987, first as editor-in-chief and then as president. In 1965, Klopfer and Cerf sold Random House to the Radio Corporation of America for $40M. The sale prompted a period of further rapid expansion. Stipulated in the contract was a provision that Random House would retain full editorial independence following the sale. While RCA was not involved in day-to-day editorial decisions, the expansion changed the nature of the company's office culture, as the headquarters were relocated from the Old Villard House to an office tower in Midtown. Following the sale, Cerf stepped down as president– and was succeeded by Robert L. Bernstein (See Boxes 605-704), who would serve 25 years in the position–but only stepped down as Chairman of the Board in 1970, a year before he passed away. Klopfer succeeded him in the position, before retiring in 1975.

In 1973, Random House acquired Ballantine Books (See Ian and Betty Ballantine Books and Business Records for records of Ballantine and of Bantam, another major imprint that would later be merged with Random House), which also changed the contours of the company's catalog from that of largely classics, literary fiction, and the lucrative field of juvenile fiction, to include a greater number of mass market fiction titles. With this expansion, the company increased its market share of paperback publishing and moved into mass market genres such as science fiction and fantasy.

The 1970s also saw Random House publish important African-American works, such as The Black Book (1974), under the editorship of Toni Morrison (Boxes 1265-1275, 1509-1533, and 1683-1684). 1980-1998: Conglomeration The 1960s and 1970s saw Random House acquire several large imprints and the 1980s constituted a period of even greater expansion. Realizing that publishing was not as lucrative a venture as it initially appeared, RCA sold Random House to Advance Publications Inc., a media conglomerate owned by the Newhouse family, for $70M. During this decade Random House acquired a number of imprints, including in 1982, Fawcett Books (a paperback publisher specializing in comics), in 1984, Times Books (previously owned by the New York Times Company), in 1986, Fodor's Travel Guides, in 1987, the UK publishing group Chatto, Virago Bodley Head & Jonathan Cape Ltd and, in 1988, Crown Publishing Group, and, in 1989, Century Hutchinson. The acquisition of these British publishing groups culminated in the establishment of Random House UK in 1989. This period also saw the company launch its AudioBooks division in 1985, marking the beginning of the company's ventures into different media.

By the late 1980s, Random House was one of the largest publishers worldwide, largely the result of becoming a subsidiary of Advance Publications Inc., which had also acquired other major institutions in the literary and cultural sphere during this period, such as The New Yorker and Vogue.

Conglomeration affected the internal organization and literary production of Random House. These changes became most evident in 1989 when Si Newhouse, one of the owners at Advance Publications Inc., told Robert Bernstein that the time had come for his retirement and replaced Bernstein with Alberto Vitale, a financial executive who later became the company's president, chairman of the board, and CEO.

These changes, which unsurprisingly trickled down to the editors and authors, reached a flashpoint in the first year of Vitale's tenure. Bernstein's professed vision of the moral and humanitarian ambition of publishing, in line with the mission statements he had inherited from Klopfer and Cerf, had meant that imprints like Pantheon, never a lucrative venture, were shielded from the fiscal requirements of corporate owners. Klopfer and Cerf had asked Pantheon to break even, with profits from other parts of the company subsiding low-profit prestigious titles. Tasked with reducing overhead costs and maximizing profit margins, Vitale requested that Pantheon books editor Andre Schiffrin trim his 1990 list by 40%. Schiffrin refused Vitale's demands and was fired, leading to the exodus of several of Pantheon's senior editors, and to protests from prominent authors, including Kurt Vonnegut, Studs Terkel, and Barbara Ehrenrich, outside the Random House offices. (See Andre Schiffrin Papers, Boxes 6 and 7 for coverage, correspondence, and clippings from the scandal). Schiffrin, along with many former Pantheon editors, would go on to found the New Press, an independent publishing house whose archives are also located at Columbia University. 1998-present In 1998, Random House was sold once more, this time to German media conglomerate Bertelsmann AG for nearly $1.4 billion. Bertelsmann AG, which owned Bantam Dell Doubleday, maintained the same expansion model as Advance Publications Inc., acquiring Anchor Books, Little Golden Books, Harvill Press, and BBC Books. Under Bertelsmann, Random House increased their global presence through the creation of Random House Mondadori, a Spanish language publisher in 2001 and Random House India in 2005, as well as the acquisition of Ediciones B, a Spanish-language publisher, and Santillana Ediciones Generales, a Portuguese-language publisher. This period also saw the company establish film and television divisions, which were united under Random House Studios in 2012. Bertelsmann merged with Pearson, the owner of Penguin, and united the two houses to form Penguin Random House in 2013. In 2020, Bertelsmann announced that it had become the sole owner of Penguin Random House and that it had purchased Simon and Schuster for $2.175 billion.

More information about the timeline of the company's mergers and acquisitions can be found at: https://global.penguinrandomhouse.com/company-history/.