The publishing firm D. Appleton & Co. grew out of a general store which was opened in New York by Daniel Appleton in 1825. As book sales were the most successful part of the business, Appleton opened a bookstore in 1831 and in that year published his first title, a volume of bible verses. Appleton's sons joined him in the business and in subsequent years the company became one of the largest scientific and academic publishers in America. Appleton and Co. began publishing fiction in the 1840s. In 1888 it began its Town and Country Library of Fiction series, which published a large number of fiction titles in cheap editions, including English and Australian authors. When its fiction publishing program was at its peak, Appleton discovered and published the work of many authors who later became well-known. The company believed in international copyright and always paid royalties to foreign authors.
In 1933 Appleton merged with the Century Co., founded in 1881, to form the D. Appleton-Century Co. From this point the company began to withdraw from the publication of current fiction. In 1948 the company purchased F. S. Crofts Co., an academic publisher founded in 1924, and became Appleton-Century-Crofts Inc. This firm was bought by the Meredith Publishing Co. in 1966, and was split into Appleton-Century, which had ceased by 1971, and Appleton-Century-Crofts, which became the educational division of Meredith Publishing. In 1974 Appleton-Century-Crofts was purchased by Prentice-Hall, and in 1982 sold to Gulf & Western. As a division of that company, it publishes, from Connecticut, a range of health science titles.
