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A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF A LONG HISTORY
(1906-2005)
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Founding
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McClelland & Stewart originated in Toronto, Ontario, the heart of
Canadian publishing, in the spring of 1906. In that year John
McClelland and Frederick Goodchild left the Methodist Book Room (later
to be known as Ryerson Press) to establish the company of McClelland
and Goodchild. Although the firm was initially founded as a library
supply house, it was not long before the imprint of McClelland and
Goodchild began to appear. Curiously, the first title to bear the new
imprint was not Canadian. It was John D. Rockefeller's Random
Reminiscences of Men and Friends, published by arrangement with
Doubleday Page in 1909. The firm was incorporated in 1911, and after
three years, George Stewart (long known as the best Bible salesman in
Canada) joined the company, which then became McClelland, Goodchild &
Stewart.
In 1916 McClelland, Goodchild & Stewart published their first book by
a Canadian author - The Watchman and Other Poems by Lucy Maud
Montgomery. Eighty-five years on, Lucy Maud's beloved Anne of Green
Gables, like her other books, is still a favourite on the M&S backlist
(and enjoys remarkable popularity in Japan!) In 1918 Goodchild left to
form his own company, and the house became McClelland & Stewart
Limited, as nature intended.
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The Early Years
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From the early days, the partners recognized the importance of
establishing a Canadian list, while realizing that in order to survive
they must continue to act as distributing agents for British and
American firms. In addition, they occasionally made direct
arrangements with foreign publishers for the publication of books by
Canadian and American authors. As the representative of many English
and American firms - among them George Doran and Company, J.M. Dent,
Cassell, Little, Brown and Company, The Bobbs Merrill Company -
McClelland & Stewart undertook the management of the Canadian
subsidiaries when some of these firms later incorporated in Canada.
The great demand for books in Canada during the First World War meant
that by 1919 some 160 books, over half of which were also published
abroad, had been published under the McClelland & Stewart imprint.
Despite the decline in the number of Canadian publications between the
two World Wars, many Canadians appeared on the M&S list, including
Stephen Leacock, Frederick Philip Grove, Thomas H. Raddall, and the
indefatigable L.M. Montgomery. Between 1917 and 1937 the most
successful Canadian author was Ralph Connor (author of The Man From
Glengarry), whose popularity was such that M&S used to order the
latest title by the railway carload.
Over the years direct publishing arrangements have been made with
authors of international reputation ranging in time from A.A. Milne to
James A. Michener. One of the most prestigious of these began in 1939
when John McClelland was on a visit to England. There he learned that
Winston Churchill, at that time in the political wilderness, was
working on a two-volume History of the English Speaking Peoples.
McClelland soon convinced Churchill to sign a contract, and the
American firm of Dodd, Mead and Company made arrangements to secure
the U.S. rights. After 1939 Churchill had more pressing demands on his
time, but the History, expanded to four volumes, finally came out in
1956, under the McClelland & Stewart imprint. More recently, M&S has
acquired the rights to publish authors as varied as Margaret Drabble,
Damon Galgut, Robert Cooper, Tom McGuane, Alan Bullock, Philip Roth,
Paul Theroux, Colm Tíobín, Simon Schama, and Sir Martin Gilbert.
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Middle Period
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After the Second World War, a swift expansion of original Canadian
publishing took place; by 1954, 40 per cent of the company's revenue
derived from these works, whose Canadian authors were sought out and
encouraged by the whirlwind company head, Jack McClelland, son of the
founder, who continued to lead the firm until 1986. Under Jack's
brilliant, mercurial leadership, the house built a stable of authors
that still defines the explosion of mid-century Canadian writing:
Margaret Laurence, Gabrielle Roy, Pierre Berton, Farley Mowat,
Mordecai Richler, Leonard Cohen, Al Purdy, Irving Layton, Hugh
MacLennan, George Grant, Peter C. Newman and Margaret Atwood.
In January 1958 the firm joined the paperback revolution by issuing
the first four titles in the New Canadian Library Series, the first
quality softcovers to appear in Canada. In 1988, under the editorship
of David Staines, a new version of the classic series was introduced
that now contains the essential canon of Canada's literary classics.
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Recent History
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In January
1986
Avie
Bennett
acquired M&S from Jack McClelland.
With
Doug
Gibson
as publisher and Ellen Seligman steering the fiction list,
the company continued to find and publish authors destined
to
become synonymous with Canadian literature, such as Alice
Munro,
Rohinton Mistry, Michael Ondaatje, Shyam Selvadurai, David
Adams Richards, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Lorna Crozier, and
Alistair
MacLeod. In 1995, McClelland
& Stewart acquired the prestigious children's publisher,
Tundra
Books
from
industry trailblazer May Cutler and under the leadership of
the new publisher, Kathy Lowinger, began a new era of stellar
award-winning publishing.
In 2000, the company again changed hands to a joint ownership venture
of the University of Toronto and Random House of Canada - an inventive
deal that maintained McClelland & Stewart's proud independence and
ensured its continued health. At the time of the donation of the
publishing program to the University of Toronto, an official at the
Canada Council for the Arts paid McClelland & Stewart the ultimate
compliment, calling the company "a national treasure." In 2004, Doug
Pepper was brought in as president and publisher with the brief to
steer the company into a vibrant second century. He is surrounded by
an enviable editorial team. Ellen Seligman, now Senior Vice President
and Publisher (Fiction), continues to sign up, edit and publish many
authors who have consistently won the country's top awards and
dominated the national bestseller lists, including this year's Giller
Prize winner, David Bergen. Susan Renouf joined the company in 2004 as
Vice President and Associate Publisher (Non-Fiction) to work with
Pepper to reinvent and reinvigorate the non-fiction list for a new
century. Maude Barlow, Dave Bidini, Andrew Cohen, Gwynne Dyer, Philip
Marchand, Rex Murphy, Noah Richler, William Sampson, Linda Spalding,
and Jessica Warner are just a few of our recent non-fiction authors.
So, what can possibly be done to build on such a staggering legacy? To
paraphrase one of our more famous authors, "Just watch us!" We are
determined to seek out a new generation of writers and new ways of
addressing form and content to create a forward-looking list that
shakes things up and makes us all look at our world with altered eyes.
At the same time, we will continue to support our stable of
established writers, building a healthy balance of tradition and
innovation. And we will, as Jack McClelland so memorably said,
continue to publish authors, not books.
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