Random House

Random House Publishing Group had its origins in 1925 when Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, two New Yorkers in their mid-twenties, acquired a line of classics and contemporary American works called The Modern Library from publisher Horace Liveright. The company assumed the name Random House two years later, in 1927, when Cerf and Klopfer decided to publish a few books on the side, "at random." Their artist friend Rockwell Kent drew his now celebrated logo of a random house, which made its debut in February l927. Among the first titles of the new imprint were limited editions illustrated by Kent of Voltaire's Candide and Melville's Moby Dick. In 1973 Random House acquired Ballantine.

Random House, Inc.

Random House, Inc. is the world's largest English-language general trade book publisher. The company comprises many publishing groups and their imprints, which publish fiction and nonfiction, both original and reprints, by some of the foremost and most popular writers of our time. It is owned by the German company Bertelsmann AG, one of the world's largest media groups.

Publishers:

• Bantam Dell Publishing Group
• Crown Publishing Group
• Doubleday Broadway
• Knopf Publishing Group
• Random House Publishing Group
• Transworld Publishers
• Waterbrook Multnomah Publishing Group