By Viking's tenth anniversary in 1935, the firm's average output was forty titles. Three years later, editor Pascal Covici joined the staff, bringing with him John Steinbeck; Viking published Steinbeck's first novel, The Long Valley, in 1938, followed in 1939 by The Grapes of Wrath. The first trade edition of Joyce's Collected Poems was published in 1937, followed two years later by the first American edition of Finnegans Wake. With Brighton Rock (1938), Graham Greene began a long line of publications at Viking. Saul Bellow's long tenure at Viking began in 1953 with his third novel, The Adventures of Augie March, which won that year's National Book Award. Herzog (1964) and Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970) also won the National Book Award, and Humboldt's Gift (1975) received the Pulitzer Prize; Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1976. In 1956, Iris Murdoch joined Viking for the first of her many novels with The Flight From the Enchanter, and the classic novel of the Beat Generation, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, was published by Viking in 1957, followed one year later by The Dharma Bums.

During the 1960s, Viking published nonfiction by Hannah Arendt, Barry Commoner Andre Maurois, and Barbara Tuchman, as well as fiction by Ian Fleming, Nadine Gordimer, Ken Kesey, Peter Matthiessen, and Wallace Stegner. Richard Seaver joined the firm in 1971 and published authors under his own imprint, including William S. Burroughs, Eugene Ionesco, Flann O'Brien, and Octavio Paz. Viking's fiction list in the 1970s included Kingsley Amis, Robert Coover, Lawrence Durrell, Frederick Forsyth, Judith Guest, Thomas Pynchon (whose Gravity's Rainbow won the 1973 National Book Award), and Muriel Spark. The nonfiction list included Lewis Thomas (whose book Lives of a Cell won the National Book Award in 1976) and Peter Matthieseen, whose book The Snow Leopard won the 1979 National Book Award. In 1975, Viking was bought by Penguin Books in England, and the company became known as Viking Penguin.

By the early 1980s, Viking had assembled a superb team of editors, including Kathryn Court, Dan Frank, Nan Graham, Gerald Howard, Elisabeth Sifton, Corlies Smith, Amanda Vaill, Chuck Verrill, and Alan D. Williams. Authors published during the 1980s included Paul Auster, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Bruce Chatwin, Don DeLillo (whose 1985 novel White Noise won the National Book Award), Robertson Davies, Mary Gordon, William Kennedy (whose 1983 novel Ironweed won the Pulitzer Prize), Stephen King, David Lodge, D.M. Thomas, and William Trevor. Lake Wobegon Days, the second novel by the Minnesota humorist Garrison Keillor, sold over a million copies in hardcover when it was published in 1985. Viking's 1989 publication of The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie unleashed a storm of controversy when the Ayatollah Khomeni pronounced a fatwa on the author. Viking Penguin author J. M. Coetzee became the first author to win the Booker Prize twice, for Life and Times of Michael K in 1983 and Disgrace in 1999. Roddy Doyle won the Booker Prize in 1994 for his novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, and Carol Shields received the Pulitzer Prize for her 1993 novel The Stone Diaries. Melissa Bank, Jared Diamond, Blanche Weisen Cook, John Dean, Helen Fielding, Bill Gates, Elizabeth Gilbert, Martha Grimes, Jan Karon, Mary Karr, John Keegan, Sue Monk Kidd; Peter Kramer, Terry McMillan, Jacquelyn Mitchard, Nathaniel Philbrick, Kevin Phillips, and Witold Rybczynski.

Viking currently publishes approximately 100 books year. The house has earned acclaim and a solid reputation for its ability to issue a broad range of literary titles and for its highly selective and successful list of commercial writers and bestsellers. Viking is recognized for nurturing and increasing the visibility of its established and more prominent authors, while orchestrating the successful launch of new and relatively unknown writers. Viking books are distinguished by their quality and endurance—a fact underscored by the long-term paperback success of many of its titles in its sister imprint Penguin.

Clare Ferraro

President

Clare Ferraro is the President of Viking, Plume and Studio Books imprints of Penguin Group (USA). Since joining Penguin Group (USA) in December 1997, Ms. Ferraro has been President of the Dutton and Plume imprints, and as such has worked with such authors as Diane Johnson, Toni Morrison, and Joyce Carol Oates. Before then she held a succession of editorial, publicity, and management positions over nineteen years at Ballantine Publishing Group, including Editor in Chief, Publisher, and Publicity Director.

Awards

The Nobel Prize for Literature

2003: J. M. Coetzee, South Africa
1991: Nadine Gordimer, South Africa
1982: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Columbia
1976: Saul Bellow, U.S.
1962: John Steinbeck, U.S.

The Nobel Peace Prize

1991: Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

2006: Geraldine Brooks, March
1995: Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries
1984: William Kennedy, Ironweed
1976: Saul Bellow, Humboldt's Gift
1972: Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry

1976: John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

The National Book Award

2005: William Vollmann, Europe Central
2000: Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea
1985: Don DeLillo, White Noise
1984: Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra
1983: Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place
1982: Victor Navasky, Naming Names
1980: Malcolm Cowley, And I Worked at the Writer's Trade
1979: Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard
1977: Wallace Stegner, The Spectator Bird
1976: John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
1976: William Gaddis, JR
1975: Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell
1974: Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
1971: Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammler's Planet
1965: Saul Bellow, Herzog
1954: Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March