The Viking Press
The Viking Press was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim. Their founding creed: “To publish a strictly limited list of good nonfiction, such as biography, history and works on contemporary affairs, and distinguished fiction with some claim to permanent importance rather than ephemeral popular interest.” The firm's name and its logo, a Viking ship drawn by Rockwell Kent, were chosen as symbols of enterprise, adventure, and exploration in publishing. Launched in the fall of 1925, early Viking lists included books by August Strindberg, Carl van Doren Vita Sackville-West, Mohandas Gandhi, Bertrand Russell, and Thorstein Veblen.
By the late ‘30s, Viking was making good on its promise to publish books of permanent importance. Legendary editor Pascal Covici joined the company bringing John Steinbeck with him, and after publishing Steinbeck’s first novel, Viking brought out The Grapes of Wrath (1939), as well as the first American edition of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939) and Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock (1938). Steinbeck and Greene would continue to publish with Viking for many years to come.
The 1950s saw the publication of American playwright Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949) and The Crucible (1953) by Viking. Saul Bellow began his long tenure at Viking with his third novel, The Adventures of Augie March, which won the year's National Book Award in 1953. Many award-winning novels followed, culminating with Bellow being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976. 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. As Kerouac’s (and Ken Kesey’s) publisher Viking was at the center of the cultural shift that would occur in the 1960s and ‘70s.
During those decades, Viking published William S. Burroughs, Hannah Arendt, Peter Matthiessen, Barbara Tuchman, Wallace Stegner, Octavio Paz, Kingsley Amis, Robert Coover, Lawrence Durrell, Frederick Forsyth, and Thomas Pynchon (who’s Gravity's Rainbow won the 1973 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 was publishing some of the most innovative and popular authors of the era: Stephen King, Phillip Roth, Terry McMillan, T. C. Boyle, Bruce Chatwin, Don DeLillo (whose 1985 novel White Noise won the National Book Award), Jorge Luis Borges, Robertson Davies, William Kennedy (whose 1983 novel Ironweed won the Pulitzer Prize), David Lodge, William Trevor, and Garrison Keillor. 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’s prestigious Booker Prize-winning authors include Roddy Doyle for his novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, and J. M. Coetzee, who became the first author to win the prize twice, for Life and Times of Michael K in 1983 and Disgrace in 1999. Coetzee went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.
As Viking approaches its second century, we think the founders would be well pleased with the works and authors who are part of our continuing publishing program. Recent successes continue to shape the thinking of the world and capture the spirit of the times. Viking is proud to publish Jan Karon’s The Mitford Years and Father Tim Novels, Eat, Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson, In the Heart of the Sea and Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick, The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd, Collapse by Jared Diamond, Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding, American Dynasty by Kevin Phillips, The Memory Keepers Daughter by Kim Edwards, and March and People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks.
Clare Ferraro
President
Clare Ferraro is the President of Viking, Plume, Hudson Street Press and Pamela Dorman Books, all imprints of Penguin Group (USA). Since joining Penguin Group (USA) in December 1997, Ms. Ferraro has been President of the Dutton and Plume imprints. Before then she held a succession of editorial, publicity, and management positions over nineteen years at Ballantine Books, 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
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: March by Geraldine Brooks
1995: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
1984: Ironweed by William Kennedy
1976: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
1972: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
2002: Practical Gods by Carl Dennis
1976: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery
The National Book Award
2005: Europe Central by William Vollmann
2000: In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick
1985: White Noise by Don DeLillo
1984: Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr
1983: The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor
1982: Naming Names by Victor Navasky
1980: And I Worked at the Writer's Trade by Malcolm Cowley
1979: The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
1977: The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner
1976: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery
1976: JR by William Gaddis
1975: The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas
1974: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
1971: Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow
1965: Herzog by Saul Bellow
1954: The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow
The National Book Critics Circle Award
2003: River of Shadows by Rebecca Solnit
2000: Jorge Luis Borges; translated by Eliot Weinberger, Esther Allen, and Suzanne Jill Levine, Selected Nonfictions
1995: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
1984: Ironweed by William Kennedy
1983: The Counterlife by Philip Roth
1976: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery
The Booker Prize
1999: Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
1993: Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle
1983: Life & Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee
1978: The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch
The Pen/Faulkner Award for American Fiction
1991: Mao II by Don DeLillo
1987: World's End by T. Coraghessan Boyle
The PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Novel
Dreams of Sleep by Josephine Humphreys
The PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Best First Book of Nonfiction
The Liars' Club by Mary Karr
A Painter of Darkness by Gerald Marzorati
The PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Translation
1997: Robert Fagles, translator of The Odyssey and The Iliad
The MacArthur Prize
John Ashbery
William Kennedy
Ann Lauterbach
The Whiting Award
Gretel Ehrlich
Roger Fanning
Rebecca Goldstein
Terrance Hayes
Eva Hoffman
Robert Jones
Mary Karr
Patrick O’Keeffe
William T. Vollmann
