The flagship imprint of Random House, Inc., Random House had its origins in l925, 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 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 1927. Among the first titles of the new imprint were limited editions illustrated by Kent of Voltaire’s CANDIDE and Melville’s MOBY DICK.

When the demand for luxury editions came to a halt with the stock market crash of 1929, Cerf and Klopfer turned to the publishing of general trade books. Among their earliest authors were Robinson Jeffers and Eugene O’Neill, and in 1934 they made headlines with the publication of James Joyce’s ULYSSES and their defense of the book in the landmark censorship case. During the next few decades they also published some of the most distinguished writers of the twentieth century: William Faulkner, Isak Dinesen, Edgar Snow, Andre Malraux, Robert Graves, Gertrude Stein, W.H. Auden and John O’Hara. As Random House’s reputation grew, so did its list of authors, including Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, Irwin Shaw, Sinclair Lewis, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, and James Michener.

In more recent years, Random House has continued to publish writers of both literary and commercial appeal such as William Styron, Gore Vidal, Maya Angelou, Carl Sagan, E. L. Doctorow, Norman Mailer, Anna Quindlen, Alice Walker, Mario Puzo, John Irving, Tracy Kidder, and Salman Rushdie. Since 1995 it has published a number of the bestselling books of all time: Colin Powell’s MY AMERICAN JOURNEY, John Berendt’s MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL, Tom Brokaw’s THE GREATEST GENERATION and Laura Hillenbrand’s SEABISCUIT. In the past few years it has become a showcase for first fiction and narrative nonfiction and has enjoyed particular success with Matthew Pearl’s THE DANTE CLUB, Azar Nafisi’s READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN, and Rob Kurson’s SHADOW DIVERS. True to its founders and its name, Random House continues to publish a rich diversity of titles, adding talented new authors to its list to ensure a future that matches its distinguished past.