B. Dalton

B. Dalton Bookseller

Former type	Subsidiary
Industry	Retail
Fate	Liquidation
Founded	1966
Founder	Bruce Dayton
Defunct	February 2013
Headquarters	Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States
Number of locations	798 at peak; approx. 50 at closing
Area served	USA
Key people	Richard Hagen, president
Products	Books
Parent	Barnes & Noble

B. Dalton Bookseller (often called B. Dalton or B. Dalton's) was an American retail bookstore chain founded in 1966 by Bruce Dayton, a member of the same family that operated the Dayton's department store chain. B. Dalton expanded to become the largest retailer of hardcover books in the United States, with 798 stores at the peak of the chain's success.

Located primarily in shopping malls, B. Dalton competed primarily with Waldenbooks. Barnes & Noble acquired the chain from Dayton's in 1987, and continued to operate it until a late 2009 announcement that the last fifty stores would be liquidated by January 2010.

Bruce Dayton, a member of the family that operated Dayton's, a department store chain based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, founded the B. Dalton chain in 1966. He named the bookstore chain after himself, but substituted an L for the Y in his surname. The name B. Dalton was also chosen because it "connoted quality, dependability and authority."

The first store opened in nearby Edina in August of that year, followed by a second in St. Louis, Missouri. Although the chain was originally intended to operate in downtowns and suburban areas, the majority of the stores were opened inside regional shopping malls. In 1969, Dayton's merged with Hudson's of Detroit and became Dayton Hudson Corporation (now Target Corporation).

B. Dalton expanded throughout the 1960s and 1970s, going from twelve stores in 1968 to 125 five years later, peaking at 798 locations in 1986. In 1968, the chain acquired Pickwick Books of California; they merged in 1979. B. Dalton had stores in 43 of 50 states in 1978, and was second to Waldenbooks (then the U.S.'s largest bookstore) in store numbers, but posted higher profits than its rival. A flagship store opened in Manhattan in December 1978, and between 1983 and 1986, the chain revived the Pickwick name as a discount bookstore.