Dodd, Mead Company archive

The publisher, Dodd, Mead and Company, was begun in New York City in 1839 as the firm, Taylor and Dodd and continued publishing until 1990.



Founded by Moses Woodruff Dodd and John S. Taylor, the publishing firm of Dodd, Mead & Co. originally published religious books. In 1840 Dodd bought out his partner and established the company as M. W. Dodd. The company was to evolve through two further changes in its name. In 1870, when Dodd’s nephew Edward S. Mead took over the firm, the publisher became Dodd and Mead. In 1876 Bleecker Van Wagenen became a partner and the name was changed to its final form, Dodd, Mead and Company.

Obligations of the World to the Bible, A Series of Lectures to Young Men (1839) was the first book published by Dodd. Although religious works dominated the early publication lists of M. W. Dodd, by the 1870s Frank Dodd, the son of Moses Dodd, had done much to change the emphasis of the publisher to a more general list. Early publications of popular fiction included Martha Finley’s Elsie Dinsmore and Edward P. Roe’s Barriers Burned Away. Edward S. Mead, a partner in Dodd, Mead, was also a writer for the company. He wrote a number of books for children and adults under the pseudonym Richard Markham. Through the 1890s and early 1900s Dodd, Mead and Company expanded publications to include a variety of British and American authors including: G. K. Chesterton, Jerome K. Jerome, H. G. Wells, Joseph Conrad, Paul Leicester Ford, George Barr McCutcheon, Hamilton Wright Mabie, and Agatha Christie.

In the late 1890s Dodd, Mead and Company introduced the work of a number of new poets including Robert W. Service, Bliss Carman, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. This archive is comprised of the contracts and correspondence between Dunbar, a prominent Black American poet, and Dodd, Mead. Dunbar’s Lyrics of Lowly Life was published in 1896, followed by Poems of Cabin and Field (1899), Lyrics of the Hearthside (1899), and a novel, The Sport of the Gods (1902).

During the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s Dodd, Mead and Company published a number of anthologies of Negro poetry, folklore, essays, stories, and humor. This archive contains contracts and permission files related to those publications. Some of the anthologies and their editors include: We Speak of Liberators (1970) and What We Must See edited by Orde Coombs, The Book of Negro Folklore (1958, 1969) edited by Arna Bontemps and Langston Hughes, 3000 Years of Black Poetry (1969) edited by Lomax and Abdul, The Book of Negro Humor (1966) edited by Langston Hughes, and The Harlem Renaissance Remembered (1972) edited by Arna Bontemps.

The business operations of Dodd, Mead and Company were suspended in March 1989 pending the outcome of arbitration with its fulfillment house, Metro Services Inc. By the end of 1990 the company ceased publications.

Gregory Ames, "Dodd, Mead and Company," Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 49: American Literary Publishing Houses, 1638-1899 (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1986). pp. 126-130.Calvin Reid, "Dodd, Mead Operations Suspended over Arbitration," Publishers Weekly, March 31, 1989. p. 11.