Viking is a legendary imprint with a distinguished list of extraordinary writers in both fiction and nonfiction. The Viking Press was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheimer. When the Viking logo, a ship drawn by Rockwell Kent, was chosen as a symbol of enterprise, adventure, and exploration in publishing, the popular authors included Sherwood Anderson, James Joyce, and D.H. Lawrence. Today, Viking boasts bestselling fiction authors like Pulitzer Prize winner Geraldine Brooks, Tana French, Rebecca Makkai, Elizabeth George, Sue Monk Kidd, Jojo Moyes, National Book Award Winner William Vollmann, and Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee. In 1925, the Viking nonfiction writers included James Weldon Johnson and August Strindberg. Today, Viking’s critically and commercially successful nonfiction authors, include Nathaniel Philbrick, Daniel James Brown, Maria Shriver, Steven Pinker, Jen Sincero, Antony Beevor, and Timothy Keller. From past to present, Viking authors not only keep winning prestigious awards but also dominate bestseller lists across the world.
By the late ‘30s, legendary editor Pascal Coivi joined Viking, bringing John Steinbeck with him. After publishing Steinbeck’s first novel, Viking brought out The Grapes of Wrath (1939), as well as the first American edition of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake (1939) and Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock (1938). Steinbeck and Greene would continue to publish with Viking for many years to come.
The 1950s saw Viking publish Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949) and The Crucible (1953). Saul Bellow began his long tenure at Viking with his third novel, The Adventures of Augie March. Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey were at the center of a cultural shift that would occur in the 1960s and ‘70s. Viking also published William S. Burroughs, Hannah Arendt, Peter Matthiessen, Barbara Tuchman, Wallace Stegner, Octavio Paz, Kingsley Amis, Robert Coover, Lawrence Durrell, Frederick Forsyth, and Thomas Pynchon. In 1975, Viking was bought by Penguin Books and the company became known as Viking Penguin.
Viking Penguin’s prestigious Booker Prize-winning authors include Roddy Doyle for his novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, and J. M. Coetzee, who became the first author to win the prize twice, for Life and Times of Michael K in (1983) and Disgrace in (1999). Coetzee went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.
In recent years, Viking has been proud to publish Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert, In the Heart of the Sea and Bunker Hill by Nathaniel Philbrick, Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin, The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles, Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks, Anticancer by David Servan-Schreiber, Faithful Place, The Likeness, Broken Harbor and The Secret Place by Tana French, A Delicate Truth by John LeCarré, Who Asked You? by Terry McMillan, The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown, and A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd and The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker.
Viking has also had particular success in the high end supernatural/alternate worlds category, making recent bestsellers out of novels by Deborah Harkness, Lev Grossman, Danielle Trussoni, and Jasper Fforde.
Viking currently publishes approximately 75 books a year. The Viking logotype continues to inspire its staff, its writers, and its audience. Readers, both American and international, appreciate Viking for its depth, its breadth, its uniqueness, and its originality. The adventure and spirit of Viking endure.
In January 2020, Viking, Penguin Books, and Pamela Dorman Books will debut a new publishing program that will live across all three imprints focused on inspiration, personal development, lifestyle, and healthy living—Viking Life, Penguin Life, and Pamela Dorman Books Life.
The editors in each imprint will acquire and publish the books in this program. The editorial, publicity, and marketing groups at all three imprints have been deeply involved in lifestyle and wellness books to great success, and the time has come to define these books within a program to better represent how important and successful these books are within Viking, Penguin, and Pamela Dorman Books. Building on our longtime success in the field—with category-defining bestsellers such as The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin, Anticancer by David Servan-Schreiber, You Are a Badass Every Day by Jen Sincero, I’ve Been Thinking . . . by Maria Shriver, and A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle—Viking Life and Pamela Dorman Books Life will feature authors with new theories, big ideas, and high-profile platforms, as well as practitioners and writers with credentials and first-hand experience in the areas of inspiration, self-help and personal growth, health and wellness, spirituality, home and nature, psychology, and personal finance. The program will launch with four books across three imprints and grow to fifteen books a year. Viking Life and Pamela Dorman Books Life will debut with:
- International supermodel, dietitian, and worldwide public speaker Maye Musk’s A Woman Makes a Plan, in which Musk shares the personal stories and hard-earned lessons she’s learned over the past seventy years, demonstrating that it’s possible for all of us to have the life we want, at any age.
- Television and social media star Kristina Kuzmic’s Hold On, But Don’t Hold Still, an inspiring and hilarious memoir of how a single mother found the strength to transform her life and become the person—and parent—she could admire, sharing personal stories and revealing tips that empowered her.
- Japan’s leading astrologer and founder of the Japanese Lunalogy Association, Keiko’s The Power Wish, a bestselling Japanese guide to summoning the energy of the universe to make your dreams come true.
- Doctor and researcher Andreas Michalsen’s Healing Through Nutrition, which unveils the latest extraordinary science around nutritional health and offers simple steps we can all take to change what and how we eat to reset our bodies, heal chronic illness, and live longer, healthier lives.
- Philippa Perry’s The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and Your Children Will be Glad That You Did), a #1 international bestseller that “tells parents what it might mean to be a sane and emotionally intelligent parent” (Alain de Botton, author of How Proust Can Change Your Life).
Awards
The Nobel Prize for Literature
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
The Pulitzer Prize for History
The National Book Award
The National Book Critics Circle Award
The Booker Prize
The Pen/Faulkner Award for American Fiction
The PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Novel
The PEN/Martha Albrand Award for Best First Book of Nonfiction
The PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Translation
The MacArthur Prize
The Whiting Award
The Wolfson History Prize
