David R. Godine
| Founded | 1970 |
|---|---|
| Founder | David R. Godine |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | Boston |
| Publication types | Books |
| Imprints | Black Sparrow |
| Official website | www |
David R. Godine, Publisher is an American book publishing company, founded in 1970 in Boston, Massachusetts.
The company's founder, David R. Godine, was a graduate of Roxbury Latin School,Dartmouth College (class of 1966), and the Harvard Graduate School of Education who had worked for artist Leonard Baskin and printer Harold McGrath, but who had no publishing experience when he opened his printing shop in 1970 in a barn in Brookline, Massachusetts. Many of the early titles were fine letterpress editions, using a 40" Kelly-3 flatbed reciprocating letterpress with three form rollers. The company has since grown to become a well-regarded, small, general trade publisher. These early editions include Arthur Freeman's Assays of Bias, Andrew Marvell's Garden (printed on a Vandercook press #20), and Thoreau's Civil Disobedience and A Plea for Captain John Brown.
By 1975, the firm had abandoned letterpress printing and decided to focus entirely on publishing. The early lists set the tone for the company's focuses, concentrating primarily on fiction (especially in translation), biography, photography, the history of printing and the graphic arts, and children's books. Over the next thirty years, a number of series were created. The Nonpareil Books collection, which now numbers over 100 titles in print, brings back neglected works; over its life the series has revived books by writers such as Donald Hall, William Maxwell, Francis Steegmuller, George Orwell, Laurie Lee, Will Cuppy, Flora Thompson and Gerald Durrell. The Verba Mundi series concentrates on translations of foreign fiction and has included the work of Dino Buzzati, Robert Musil, Georges Perec, J. M. G. Le Clézio and Patrick Modiano. The Imago Mundi series of finely printed illustrated books, primarily photography, has promoted work by artists such as Paul Caponigro, George Tice, Angus McBean and Jean Cocteau. The small format Pocket Paragons concentrate on illustrated books by authors and artists including Marie Angel, William Heath Robinson, Lotte Jacobi and Margaret Bourke-White. Godine's children's list includes authors and illustrators such as William Steig, Mary Azarian, , Joe McKendry, and Edward Ardizzone. Every year the firm issues between twenty and forty new titles and also reprints roughly the same number.
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