E. P. Dutton & Company Inc.

E. P. Dutton was an American book publishing company founded as a book retailer in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1852 by Edward Payson Dutton.

In 1864, Dutton expanded to New York City, where it began publishing religious books. In 1906, Dutton made a deal with English publishing company J. M. Dent to be the American distributor of the Everyman's Library series of classic literature reprints.

John Macrae joined the company in 1885 as an office boy and in 1923 was named president. In 1928, the publishing and retail divisions were split into two separate businesses with Macrae acquiring the publishing side, operating as E. P. Dutton and Company, Inc.

It published children's books under the Unicorn imprint, with some books published in the 1990s. Dutton Children's Books continues today.

In 1975, Dutton was acquired by the Dutch publisher Elsevier. Dutton lost money under Dutch ownership, and the company was sold to the buyout firm Dyson-Kissner-Moran in 1981. The paperback publisher New American Library acquired Dutton in 1985.

In 1986, the company was acquired by Penguin Group and split into two imprints: Dutton and Dutton Children's Books. Dutton is now a boutique imprint within Penguin Group, publishing approximately 40 books per year, half fiction and half non-fiction. After the acquisition by Penguin, books that Penguin acquired the rights to as part of the acquisition of Dutton were published in paperback under the imprint Puffin Unicorn (because Puffin has been the longtime paperback imprint for the Penguin Group). Penguin merged with Random House to form Penguin Random House in 2015.

In 2017, sister imprint Blue Rider Press was closed and its books were moved to Dutton.

Wikipedia contributors. (2018, May 24). E. P. Dutton. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 12:38, July 17, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=E._P._Dutton&oldid=842689507