AustLit

The Fawcett Publications Group was founded in Minneapolis in 1919 by Wilford H. 'Captain Billy' Fawcett as a magazine publishing firm. It began with the publication of Fawcett's own magazine, Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, a joke book aimed at entertaining hospitalised World War I veterans. Fawcett later published around fifty titles, including True Confessions, Smokehouse Monthly, Mechanix Illustrated, Motion Pictures, True, Battle Stories, Daring Detective, Dynamic Detective, Family Circle, Screen Secrets, Triple-X Western, and Woman's Day.

The company's huge growth during the early 1930s eventually forced it to relocate its corporate headquarters to Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1940. Fawcett's book publishing division, then known as Fawcett World Library, as well as its editorial and advertising offices, were set up in New York City at the same time. When Wilfred Fawcett died that same year, his four sons inherited the company and, over the next decade, they continued to expand its operations. In 1949, with the help of editorial director Ralph Daigh, they devised a strategy that allowed them to get around the 1948 distribution contract with New American Library's Mentor and Signet imprints. Because the agreement prevented them from competing in the mass paperback reprint market, Fawcett's option was to establish Gold Medal Books, a line of entirely new and original fiction and non-fiction publications. Selling for 25 cents, the imprint became the first successful attempt at original paperback publishing at a national level in America.

Through its Gold Medal imprint, Fawcett was able to give emerging authors a chance at book publication early in their careers. Some of these individuals later went on to establish high-profile writing careers, including John D. MacDonald, Kurt Vonnegut, and Taylor Caldwell. For established writers such as William Goldman and MacKinlay Kantor, Gold Medal was an opportunity to test out new creative ideas under pseudonyms. The generous terms offered by Gold Medal were also attractive to authors of both levels of experience. Within a year, the imprint was publishing eight titles a month.

When the New American Library's contract expired in 1955, Fawcett moved immediately into the reprint market, starting up a new imprint, Crest Books, headed by associate editor Leona Nevler. (Richard Carroll became Editor in Chief of Gold Medal Books). Fawcett's credentials as a serious bidder for reprints were established within a few years, particularly after Nevler acquired the publishing rights for James Gould Cozzens's By Love Possessed for a then record amount of US $101,000. Another imprint, Premier Books, established at the same time as Crest, targeted classics and 'solid' non-fiction. Over the years, however, the line between imprints was blurred, with Gold Medal occasionally reprinting Crest titles, while Crest sometimes reprinted Premier books. More commonly, Crest would reprint 'the backlist of an author whose current Gold Medal book was selling particularly well' (Barttler p.145).

Fawcett World Literature became a commonplace designation by 1962 and was used to collectively refer to Crest, Premier, and Gold Medal publications. Following Ralph Daigh's retirement in 1974, Leona Nevler was appointed vice-president and publisher of Fawcett Publications, then one of the last remaining family-owned US publishing houses. Three years later, CBS/Publications Group acquired Fawcett with a US $50 million deal. Under CBS, the new division became Fawcett Books Incorporated, with the responsibility of overseeing Popular Library. In 1978, less than a year after the sale went through, the United States Justice Department mounted a law suit against CBS, arguing that the deal amounted to a publishing monopoly. The late 1970s/early 1980s also saw Fawcett establish two further imprints: Coventry Romances (1979), which competed with Harlequin Books, and Juniper Books (1981), an imprint for young adults.

In 1981, CBS agreed to sell Popular Library in order to retain Fawcett, but the following year changed its position and instead sold Fawcett to Random House, a division of Newhouse Publications (which included Ballantine/Del Ray). Popular Library was also sold that same year to Warner Books. Since the 1982 sale, Fawcett Books (comprising the Crest, Gold Medal, Juniper, and Premier imprints) have been listed as Ballantine/Del Ray/Fawcett. Leona Nevler, who had resigned from Fawcett in 1981, joined Ballantine as executive editor in charge of the Fawcett lines in 1982. The Fawcett imprint stopped being used on new books from around 2000.