Renowned for its international list of literary fiction, nonfiction, poetry and children's books, Farrar, Straus and Company was founded in 1945 by John C. Farrar (1896-1974) and Roger W. Straus Jnr. (1917-2004). Farrar had previously been editor in chief at the George Doran Company and later a director of Doubleday, Doran. In 1925 he and fellow director Stanley Rinehart left to start up their own company Farrar and Rinehart. Farrar resigned in 1944 and the following year co-founded Farrar, Straus and Company, with himself as Chairman and Roger Straus as president and Chief Executive Officer. Straus, who had studied journalism at the University of Missouri, had previously established himself as the editor of Current History and Forum magazine before founding a book-packaging firm, Book Ideas, in 1941.
The new publishing house announced its interest in publishing the work of both new and young writers, as well as the latest works by veteran writers. Among the first titles to be published by Farrar, Straus and Company was James Branch's There Were Two Pirates (1946). By the early 1950s the company had begun to establish a reputation for literary quality through titles such as Christ Stopped at Eboli (Carlo Levi, 1947), The Women of Rome (Alberto Moravia, 1949) and Classics and Commercials (Edmund Wilson, 1950). Among Farrar, Straus and Company's earliest best-sellers from this period are Quentin Reynolds' Courtroom (1950) and Gayelord Hauser's Look Younger, Live Longer (1950).
In 1951 the company changed its name to Farrar, Straus and Young, reflecting the significant input by director Stanley Young, and acquired Creative Age Press. Two years later it bought out Pellegrini and Cudahy, with Sheila Cudahy joining the firm as part of the deal. Her name replaced Young's in 1955. That same year Robert Giroux (1914-2008) joined the company as vice-president and editor in chief. A Columbia University graduate, where he edited the Coumbia Review) Giroux established his reputation with Harcourt, Brace after publishing the 1946 Pulitzer prize-winning Lord Weary's Castle by Robert Lowell. Seventeen of his Harcourt, Brace authors followed him to Farrar, Straus and Cudahy.
The 1957 acquisition of L. C. Page and Company of Boston (including a large backlist if juvenile books) was followed in 1958 by the purchase of McMullen Books. Two year later the firm bought out Noonday press, a quality paperback line. Sheila Cudahy left the company in 1962 and in 1964 a new name was established Farrar, Straus and Giroux, reflecting the enormous role that Robert Giroux had played since joining in 1955. The first title to be published by the new organisation was Robert Lowell's For the Union Dead (1964).
Roger Straus continued to run the company following the death of his partner in 1974. In 1993, however, he sold a majority interest of the company to the privately owned German publishing conglomerate Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH. The following year that corporation acquired the Macmillan group (which now operates in the United States as a division of the Holtzbrinck group). Farrar, Straus and Giroux was subsequently subsumed into Macmillan, although it continues to retain control of its publishing activity. Jonathan Galassi (1949-), who began his publishing career at Houghton Mifflin in Boston, and later moved to Random House, joined Farrar, Straus and Giroux as executive editor in 1985. Two years later he was named editor-in-chief. Galassi became the firm's president and publisher following Straus's retirement.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux (and its previous entities) has published numerous works which have subsequently gone on to win high profile industry recognition, including numerous National Book Awards, Pulitzer Prizes, and twenty-two Nobel Prizes in literature. Nobel Prize-winners include Knut Hamsun, Hermann Hesse, T. S. Eliot, Pär Lagerkvist, François Mauriac, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Salvatore Quasimodo, Nelly Sachs, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Pablo Neruda, Eugenio Montale, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Czeslaw Milosz, Elias Canetti, William Golding, Wole Soyinka, Joseph Brodsky, Camilo José Cela, Nadine Gordimer, Derek Walcott, Seamus Heaney, and Mario Vargas Llosa.
Poetry has also played a pivotal role on the Farrar, Straus and Giroux list. Among the more celebrated writers are Elizabeth Bishop, Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, John Ashbery, Thom Gunn and Les Murray.
Fiction has an even greater international reach, distinguished by Michael Cunningham, Jonathan Franzen, Peter Høeg, Amitav Ghosh, Roberto Bolaño, Denis Johnson, Jamaica Kincaid, Marilynne Robinson, Bernard Malamud, Alice McDermott, Péter Nádas, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Richard Powers, Susan Sontag, Scott Turow, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Tom Wolfe.
Among the non-fiction lists are publications within the fields of history, art history, natural history, current affairs and science. Significant authors here include: Thomas Friedman, Philip Gourevitch, George Packer, Alex Ross, Michael Holroyd, William Langewiesche, Gina Kolata, Louis Menand, and John McPhee.
A number of Australian authors have had their works published by the company. These include: Max Murray, Ivan Southall, Rodney Hall, Jane Alsion, Shirley Hazzard and Peter Temple.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux imprints include: Faber and Faber, Hill and Wang, Sarah Crichton Books, North Point Press, Graywolf Press, and Drawn and Quarterly.
