Note (2018): After being acquired by Penguin Books in 1975, Viking has been published as an imprint of Penguin. Please see below for a longer, but not comprehensive, history of the company.
The Viking Press was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim. 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. In August 1925, before any titles had been published, Viking acquired the twenty-three year old firm of B.W. Huebsch; Huebsch brought with him a backlist of titles by James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and Sherwood Anderson. The first Viking list in the Fall of 1925 included books by James Weldon Johnson and August Strindberg, and later publications in that decade included biographies by Carl van Doren and Vita Sackville-West, and nonfiction by Mohandas Gandhi, Bertrand Russell, and Thorstein Veblen.
In 1975, Viking was bought by Penguin Books in England, and the company became known as Viking Penguin.
