Barnes and Noble's origins date back to 1917 when founders William R. Barnes and G. Clifford Noble established Barnes and Noble Booksellers in New York City. Barnes had until that time been involved in his father's book printing company in Wheaton, Illinois (founded in 1873). Noble, meanwhile was involved in several bookselling companies, but with several key members of his family away on active war duty these thriving businesses were facing uncertainty as he struggled to manage them on his own. According to Kayla Morgan Noble and Charles Barnes were friends, despite being based in different states. After meeting with each other Barnes decided to accept Noble's offer to become a partner and sold his share of the family company to his father-in-law (p. 13).
The company prospered as a bookseller over the next decade and in 1929, two years before Barnes and Noble Incorporated became a publishing house, Clifford Noble sold his interest in the company to his partner, leaving Barnes as President and sole director. The Barnes and Noble publishing division, initially headed by A. W. Littlefield. specialised in literary criticism and specifically tagetted books that were on the reading lists of university courses. By 1949, when Littlefield left to found his own publishing house, Barnes and Noble had released more than sixty education titles. The company had also begun publishing reprints of classics by authors such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, William Thackery and James Fenimore Cooper.
John A. Barnes succeeded his father as President in 1942 and after his death in 1964 the company began to go into decline. It was bought out Ampel, Incorporated in 1969 and on-sold two years later to Leonard Riggio. The 1971 acquisition also saw the imprint re-organised as Barnes and Noble Books. Under Riggio's management Barnes and Noble steadily regained its position as a publishing house. In 1974, for example, the company became the first American publisher to advertise on television and the following year set a precedent by becoming the first US bookseller to discount books, selling New York Times best-selling titles at 40% off the publishers' list price. During the 1970s the company began to expand its operations in both New York and Boston by opening small discount book stores. These were phased out in the 1980s in favour of larger stores, many of which also included cafes.
The 1980s saw Barnes and Noble establish a mail order service specialising in its own publications. These were mostly cheap reissues of out-of-print titles. When Riggio bought out the B. Dalton chain from Dayton Hudson in 1987 the acquisition turned Barnes and Noble into a nationwide retailer. The company also later acquired Doubleday Book Shops from the Bertelsmann Company and the rights to the Scribner's bookstore trade name from Macmillan.
Leonard Riggio's innovative approach to publishing and bookselling saw Barnes and Noble begin exploring the possibilities of the internet in the late 1980s. In the mid-1990s the company began selling books on CompuServe and in 1997 opened a book superstore on America Online. The company's website was also launched that same year. According to the site, it now carries over 1 million titles.
In 2001 Barnes and Noble purchased SparkNotes.com, a leading study aids website, offering free online access to literature notes and more than 1,000 study guides on everything from literature to chemistry to computer science. The following year Leonard Riggio's brother Stephen Riggio was named CEO. Another major acquisition was made by the company in 2003 when it bought out Sterling Publishing, one of the world's leading publishers of non-fiction books.
