Gnome Press
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| Status | Defunct 1962 |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1948 |
| Founder | Martin Greenberg and David A. Kyle |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Headquarters location | New York City |
| Publication types | Books |
| Fiction genres | science fiction |
Gnome Press was an American small-press publishing company primarily known for publishing many science fiction classics. Gnome was one of the most eminent of the fan publishers of SF, producing 86 titles in its lifespan — many considered classic works of SF and Fantasy today. Gnome was important in the transitional period between Genre SF as a magazine phenomenon and its arrival in mass-market book publishing, but proved too underfunded to make the leap from fan-based publishing to the professional level. The company existed for just over a decade, ultimately failing due to inability to compete with major publishers who also started to publish science fiction. In its heyday, Gnome published many of the major SF authors, and in some cases, as with Robert E Howard's Conan series (published in six books from 1950-1955) and Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (published in three books from 1951-1953), was responsible for the manner in which their stories were collected into book form.
“[I]f you look at one of Gnome Press’s old catalogs, you find you are staring at a million dollars. The authors they had! Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein. Arthur C. Clarke. They had them all. They had the rights to books that have collectively sold tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of copies since, and they had acquired them at prices that would make a cat weep.” —–Frederik Pohl.
The company was founded in 1948 by Martin Greenberg and David A. Kyle, New York science fiction fans and members of the Hydra Club; Kyle was also a Futurian. Greenberg had previously been a partner of specialty press New Collectors Group - see The Black Wheel. The address was Gnome Press, Inc., 80 E. 11th St. New York 3, N.Y. Kyle contributed less and less to the press as other business interests took up more of his time.
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