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.
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
