Dutton (publisher)

In 1852 Edward Payson Dutton founded a bookselling firm in Boston. In 1864 the eponymous E. P. Dutton & Co. began to publish books in earnest, at first mainly religious titles; its first bestseller was Frederic W. Farrar’s two-volume The Life of Christ, published in 1874.⁠[1]

Dutton founded the bookselling firm with a partner. The move into publishing in 1864 followed the purchase of the Ticknor & Fields Bookstore, which had a small publishing division. In 1869 Dutton opened his first New York City bookstore and moved the headquarters to New York.⁠[2]

In 1885 John Macrae began working at Dutton as an office boy; he spent fifty-nine years with the company, rising through the ranks. He became president in 1923, and in 1928 he bought the publishing house and shared it with his two sons.⁠[1]

Macrae was 19 when he joined as a clerk at the New York store, and the Macrae family remained associated with the company for nearly a hundred years. He became president after E. P. Dutton’s death in 1923. He expanded children’s publishing, and Dutton became the American publisher of the Winnie-the-Pooh books, which Macrae and his son John Macrae Jr., who had joined in 1921, displayed in Macy’s windows. In 1928 the retail and publishing operations were split, and Macrae acquired the publishing division, which he led until his death in 1944.⁠[2]

In 1944 John Macrae Jr. became chairman. In 1947 Dutton published Mickey Spillane’s I, the Jury and Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar. In 1968 John Macrae III, who had been an editor at Harper & Brothers, returned to lead Dutton. In 1976 Dutton published Gail Sheehy’s Passages, a major bestseller.⁠[2]

In 1976 Dutton was sold to Elsevier, a merger that lasted five years. In 1981, after a planned sale to Volt fell through, the Dyson-Kissner-Moran group bought Dutton; John Macrae III then left for Holt, Rinehart and Winston, where he ran the John Macrae Books imprint. In 1985 Dutton was sold to NAL, and in 1986 Penguin bought NAL. Afterward, Dutton’s trade paperback reprints moved to Plume and its mass-market reprints to NAL, and its adult and children’s units were separated.⁠[2]

Dutton joined the Penguin Publishing Group in 1986 and, after Penguin merged with Random House, became an imprint of Penguin Random House.⁠[1][2]

Brian Tart joined Dutton in 1998 and later served as its president and publisher, heading it for nine years.⁠[3]

Tart designated 2014 as the 150th anniversary of Dutton as a publisher, and the company posted highlights of its history on its website. Beginning with Jussi Adler-Olsen’s The Purity of Vengeance in late December, every book Dutton published in 2014 carried a new logo and a paragraph on the company’s history. Dutton was then publishing about 40 hardcovers a year, split evenly between fiction and nonfiction, with simultaneous e-book editions; in 2013, 20 Dutton books made the New York Times print and extended bestseller lists.⁠[2]

In January 2015 Penguin Publishing Group reorganized. Brian Tart left his posts as president and publisher of Dutton, Gotham and Avery to become president and publisher of Viking; Ivan Held, previously president of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, became president of Putnam and Dutton; Ben Sevier, Dutton’s editor-in-chief since 2007, became its publisher while remaining editor-in-chief; and Christine Ball, Dutton’s associate publisher, took charge of marketing and publicity for both imprints. Putnam and Dutton kept separate editorial departments, lists and identities. In the same reorganization Hudson Street Press and Gotham Books were discontinued after their summer 2015 lists.⁠[4]

Ben Sevier left Dutton to replace Jamie Raab as publisher of Grand Central Publishing. Christine Ball, previously vice president and deputy publisher of Putnam, Dutton and Berkley, was promoted to senior vice president and publisher of the three imprints, reporting to their president, Ivan Held; each imprint’s editorial team continued to acquire books independently.⁠[5]

In March 2017 John Parsley, previously vice president and executive editor at Little, BrownBrown UniversityBrown University is a private nonprofit research university in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Ivy League. Chartered by Rhode Island's colonial legislature in 1764, it is known for its undergraduate Open Curriculum, which has no common required core. Christina H. Paxson, president since July 2012, announced on August 3, 2026, that the 2026–27 academic year would be her last in office. As of October 1, 2026, the search for Brown's 20th president remained underway.Open the full entry, was named vice president and editor-in-chief of Dutton, filling the role vacated by Sevier.⁠[6]

Parsley took charge of Dutton’s editorial department. At the same time, Berkley’s military-history line Caliber and its executive editor Brent Howard moved to Dutton, with Howard reporting to Parsley alongside Dutton executive editors Jill Schwartzman, Stephen Morrow and Maya Ziv.⁠[7]

In 2024 Dutton published the hardcover of Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario in New York, with 373 numbered pages plus 24 preliminary pages, ISBN 9780593476093.⁠[8]

On July 28, 2026, the hardcover of Jacobsen’s Biological War: A Scenario went on sale, at 432 pages and a price of $33.00.⁠[9]

The book’s publication statement reads “New York, NY : Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2026.”⁠[10]

In May 2024 John Parsley was promoted to vice president and publisher of Dutton, reporting to president Ivan Held and overseeing the imprint’s editorial, marketing and publicity; Christine Ball was promoted to executive vice president and publisher of Berkley and no longer handled Dutton.⁠[11]

Parsley had by then spent seven years as editor-in-chief of Dutton and its imprints Plume and Tiny Reparations Books, where his authors included Scott Ellsworth, Annie Jacobsen, Jonathan Karl, Jason Mott and Joe Posnanski. Allison Dobson, president of Penguin Publishing Group, announced the changes in a letter to staff.⁠[12]

Books Dutton published during the Macrae years include Cleveland Amory’s The Proper Bostonians, Marchette Chute’s Shakespeare of London, Sir John Hunt’s The Conquest of Everest and Françoise Sagan’s Bonjour Tristesse, as well as works by Lawrence Durrell, Milton Glaser and Luigi Pirandello. Authors it later published include John Irving (The World According to Garp), James Beard, Peter Matthiessen, Jorge Luis Borges, Gavin Maxwell, Joyce Carol Oates, Gore Vidal, Gail Sheehy (Passages), Ayn Rand and Mickey Spillane.⁠[1]

Bestsellers listed on Dutton’s website include Riley Sager’s The Unknown, Ana Reyes’s The House in the Pines, Fiona Davis’s The Stolen Queen, Joe Posnanski’s Why We Love Baseball, Annie Jacobsen’s Biological War, Kristen Perrin’s How to Solve Your Own Murder, Anna Lembke’s Dopamine Nation, Nick Offerman’s Where the Deer and the Antelope Play and Joyce Vance’s Giving Up Is Unforgivable.⁠[1]

Dutton publishes about seventy books a year, half nonfiction and half fiction, and its imprints include Plume and Tiny Reparations Books. Ivan Held, president of Putnam, Dutton and Berkley, oversees business and publishing strategy for the three imprints, and John Parsley is vice president and publisher of Dutton and its imprints Plume and Tiny Reparations. Dutton turns 175 in 2027.⁠[1][1]

In Penguin Random House’s list of publishers and imprints, Dutton appears under Penguin Publishing Group, while Dutton Children’s Books appears under Penguin Young Readers.⁠[13]