Vintage Classics is a paperback publisher of contemporary fiction and non-fiction. It is part of the Vintage imprint, which is itself a part of
Random HouseRandom House, Inc. is the world's largest English-language general trade book publisher. It has been owned since 1998 by the large German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing...
Publishers. The famous American publisher
Alfred A. KnopfAlfred A. Knopf, Sr. was a leading American publisher of the 20th century, and founder of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.. His contemporaries included the likes of Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, and Frank Nelson Doubleday, J. Henry Harper and Henry Holt...
(1892–1984) originally founded Vintage Books in the United States in 1954 as a paperback home for the authors published by his company. Vintage was launched in the United Kingdom in 1990 and works independently from the American imprint although both are part of the international publishing group, Random House.
Vintage Classics is a paperback publisher of contemporary fiction and non-fiction. It is part of the Vintage imprint, which is itself a part of
Random HouseRandom House, Inc. is the world's largest English-language general trade book publisher. It has been owned since 1998 by the large German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing...
Publishers. The famous American publisher
Alfred A. KnopfAlfred A. Knopf, Sr. was a leading American publisher of the 20th century, and founder of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.. His contemporaries included the likes of Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, and Frank Nelson Doubleday, J. Henry Harper and Henry Holt...
(1892–1984) originally founded Vintage Books in the United States in 1954 as a paperback home for the authors published by his company. Vintage was launched in the United Kingdom in 1990 and works independently from the American imprint although both are part of the international publishing group, Random House. Vintage in the UK is run by a small team of people working in the Random House offices in
PimlicoPimlico is a small area of central London in the City of Westminster. Like Belgravia, to which it was built as a southern extension, Pimlico is known for its grand garden squares and impressive Regency architecture....
in London.
Vintage is now a paperback publisher of contemporary fiction and non-fiction, publishing writers like
Philip RothPhilip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 story collection Goodbye, Columbus, and has since become one of the most honored authors of his generation: Roth's books have twice been awarded the National Book Award, twice the National Book Critics Circle award, and...
,
Ian McEwanIan Russell McEwan, CBE, FRSA, FRSL, is a Booker Prize-winning English novelist and screenwriter.-Early life:McEwan was born in Aldershot, the son of Rose Lilian Violet and David McEwan. He spent much of his childhood in East Asia, Germany and North Africa, where his father, a Scottish army...
,
Richard YatesRichard Yates was an American novelist and short story writer, known for his exploration of mid-20th century life.-Biography:...
, Willa Cather,
Martin AmisMartin Louis Amis is an English novelist, literary critic, professor, and short story writer. He is the son of Sir Kingsley Amis. His works include such novels as Money , London Fields and The Information...
and
Toni MorrisonToni Morrison is a Nobel Prize-winning American author, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed black characters...
. There are many Booker and Nobel Prize-winning authors on the Vintage list, including writers such as
Salman RushdieSir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is a British Indian novelist and essayist. He achieved fame with his second novel, Midnight's Children , which won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his early fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent...
who won the Booker of all Bookers for
Midnight's ChildrenMidnight's Children is an epic book of magical realism, a poioumenon about India's transition from British colonialism to independence. It was written by Salman Rushdie in 1981 and is considered an example of postcolonial literature...
, and the imprint publishes a huge variety of books while Vintage Classics publishes the great authors of the past.
Vintage Classics has existed since the inception of Vintage and publishes
Graham GreeneHenry Graham Greene OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...
,
Harper LeeNelle Harper Lee is an American author known for her 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom of the United States for her contribution to literature in 2007.-Early life:...
,
Ernest HemingwayErnest Miller Hemingway was an American writer and journalist. He was part of the 1920s expatriate community in Paris, and one of the veterans of World War I later known as "the Lost Generation." He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea, and the Nobel Prize in Literature...
and
Virginia WoolfAdeline Virginia Woolf was an English novelist, essayist, epistler, publisher, feminist, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
, among others. In August 2007 they will have a major re-launch of the list, the most high-profile or perhaps controversial aspect of which is the idea of 'twinning' modern authors with established classic ones to provide new ways of thinking about the books, such as pairing Ian McEwan's
Atonement with Henry James's
What Maisie Knew and Dante's
Inferno with Philip Roth's
Sabbath's Theater.
Jacket Design in Existing and New Classics
Vintage Classics have also moved away from the traditional idea used by other classics publishers such as
PenguinPenguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Allen Lane. Lane's idea was to provide quality writing cheaply, for the same price as a packet of cigarettes. He also wanted them to be sold not only in bookshops but in railway stations, general stores and corner shops. Its most emblematic products...
or
Oxford University PressOxford house Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. they are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as OUP's...
of jacketing classics with art from the period in which they were written by instead using contemporary, stylised looks that are intended to broaden the book's appeal and relate to the way Vintage jacket their contemporary literature.
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