THE HISTORY OF THE DIAL PRESS

The Dial Press was founded in 1924 by Lincoln MacVeagh, later Roosevelt's wartime ambassador to Greece and Yugoslavia, at the invitation of Scofield Thayer, editor and owner of the Dial literary magazine. Under the direction of MacVeagh and his successors, Dial's small but accomplished list of authors came to include James Baldwin, Thomas Berger, Vance Bourjaily, Elizabeth Bowen, James M. Cain, Richard Condon, e. e. cummings, Salvador Dali, Andre Dubus, Shelby Foote, Ford Madox Ford, James Jones, D. H. Lawrence, Robert Ludlum, Norman Mailer, Larry McMurtry, Howard Sackler, Wallace Stegner, Glenway Wescott, and Frank Yerby. In the 1960s, under the direction of Richard Baron, its celebrated editorial staff included E. L. Doctorow, James Silberman, Henry Robbins, Richard Marek, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, and Joyce Johnson.

After a period of inactivity, The Dial Press was revived as an imprint of Dell Publishing and subsequently the Bantam Dell Publishing Group, first publishing in the spring of 1995. In the spirit of its past, its list has remained small but eclectic, with a continuing commitment to the tradition of quality fiction and nonfiction. In 2005, the Dial Press Trade Paperback publishing program was launched. Between its hardcover and paperback lists, Dial publishes authors as diverse as Isabel Allende, Jorge Amado, Marie Arana, Nicholas Christopher, Allegra Goodman, Lloyd Jones, Sophie Kinsella, Caroline Knapp, Mary Lawson, Hisham Matar, Elizabeth McCracken, Michael Paterniti, Richard Rodriguez, David Schickler, Sam Shepard, Sting, Hannah Tinti, and Kurt Vonnegut.