Charles Scribner's Sons Art Department Card File Collection

Over the course of 150 years, Scribner and Sons has published many illustrated books and magazines at the forefront of American literature and arts. Founded by Charles Scribner I and Isaac D. Baker in 1846, the New York-based publishing firm began producing religious books as Baker & Scribner. When Baker died shortly after founding the firm, Scribner renamed the firm Charles Scribner Company and took over as its sole director. After publishing their first magazine, Hours at Home, the company created a new magazine firm under the name Scribner and Company in 1870. It was during this time that Scribner not only created Scribner’s Magazine but also delved into literature with book publishing.

One year later, when his father died, John Blair Scribner took over as president of the firm. Under his leadership, the firm established a name for itself in children’s literature with St. Nicholas Magazine, a children’s periodical led by Mary Mapes Dodge. They also experienced growth in their subscription and reference book departments with publications such as an American edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Dictionary of American History, all while publishing many of American literature’s most popular books and authors. In 1881, they sold Scribner and Company to Century, who changed the name of the popular Scribner Magazine to Century Magazine. Scribner agreed to stay out of the magazine publishing industry for five years.

In 1875, Charles Scribner II joined his brother as a partner at the firm. He became its manager following John Blair’s death four years later. By the time the third Scribner brother, Arthur Hawley Scribner, had joined the firm in 1884, all non-family partners had left the company. They changed its name to its current title, Scribner and Sons, a name synonymous with mid-century American literature. During this period, they published the works of American literary giants including Henry James, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. By their 1886 re-entry into magazine publishing with the new Scribner’s Magazine, they had established themselves as venerable publishers of not only quality literary works, but also of the art that defined the Golden Age of Illustration (1885-1935). Scribner and their notable art editor Joseph Hawley Chapin frequently worked with the artists of the Brandywine School, including Howard Pyle, Jesse Willcox Smith, and N. C. Wyeth, especially for their successful “Scribner Illustrated Classics” collection. In July of 1908, a fire in the Scribner’s Magazine in-house art department destroyed many of the original artworks created for the magazine.

Charles Scribner II’s son Charles Scribner III joined the firm in 1913, and in 1928, the latter stepped down as president, leaving the firm in his brother Arthur’s hands. Scribner III took over as president four years later when Arthur passed. During the 1930s, Charles Scribner’s Sons created a new children’s book department. Despite the Great Depression, the firm experienced four more decades of moderate success under its founder’s name until merging with Atheneum in 1978. The publisher is now owned by CBS.

Charles Scribner, Jr. passed this index card collection on to the Brandywine Museum of Art in 1975, following correspondence with James Duff, the museum’s then-director. Scribner had contacted Duff in hopes of selling the firm’s collection of work by artists of the Brandywine School. The Museum could not meet Scribner’s price at the time, but they found a buyer in art collector S. Hallock du Pont, who gradually loaned and donated all the works to the museum. During Duff’s meeting with Scribner, the latter offered to donate the card file, which contained extensive details on the many artists with whom Charles Scribner’s Sons had collaborated, to the Brandywine. According to an account by Duff, the Museum’s staff drove back to the building to collect the card file the very same day.