St. Martin's Press / Tor Archive (Ms.2005.5)

Historical note

Founded in 1952 by Macmillan Publishers Limited of England, St. Martin's Press is one of the largest publishers in America.

St. Martin's Press operates eight separate imprints that include St. Martin's Press, St. Martin's Griffin, St. Martin's Minotaur, Picador USA, Thomas Dunne Books, and Truman Talley Books. St. Martin's is part of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC, a group of publishing companies held by Verlagsgruppe George Von Holtzbrinck, a family owned publishing operation based in Stuttgart, Germany.

The St. Martin's Press archives includes correspondence and related materials from a wide variety of 20th century authors, including Edward Abbey, Isaac Asimov, James Herriot, Robert Travers, Randy Shilts, Sean O'Casey, R. Buckminster Fuller, M. M. Kaye, Jerzy Kozinski, Henry Roth, and James Baldwin. In addition, papers regarding the entire spectrum of St. Martin's catalog of biographies, histories, science, literary essays, and fiction, published throughout the press's various divisions - trade, mass market, scholarly and reference, and college textbooks - are available. Records for Tor, a wholly-owned subsidiary which features science fiction, horror, and other genre fiction, are also included.

The breadth of material is useful for the study of individual writers, as well as for the study of literature in general, the economics of publishing, the socioeconomic history of bestsellers, popular culture and the media, and the role of ideology in publishing.