WG, Doubleday and Ken McCormick New York-based publishing company Doubleday & McClure was launched in 1897 by Brooklyn-born Frank Nelson Doubleday (1862-1934), who had bought his own printing press at the age of ten and spent the previous eighteen years at Scribner's, and Samuel McClure (1857-1949), founder of the first US newspaper syndicate in 1884 and McClure's Magazine in 1893. One of the firm's earliest successes was The Day's Work, a short story collection by Rudyard Kipling, who had followed FND from Scribner's. In 1900 Doubleday and McClure dissolved their partnership, upon which FND paired with former Atlantic Monthly editor Walter Page to re-launch as Doubleday, Page & Company.1 The best-selling novels (The Leopard's Spots, 1902; The Clansman, 1905) of white supremacist Thomas Dixon Jr., who was a North Carolina acquain- tance of Page's, "changed a struggling publishing venture into the empire that Doubleday was to become".2 Other authors published in the Page era include Booth Tarkington, Joseph Conrad, Jack London, O Henry and Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1910, the firm relocated to Garden City, Long Island, which would remain Doubleday's HQ until 1986. In 1921, the partners bought a controlling interest in UK publisher William Heinemann; back home, in 1922, Page inaugurated the company's juvenile department, the second in the nation, headed by May Massee. Frank Doubleday's son Nelson joined the firm in the same year. In 1927, Doubleday, Page & Company merged with the George H. Doran Company to create Doubleday, Doran & Co. Although Doran retired in 1935, it was not until 1946 that the company assumed its last, simplest and most familiar corporate title, Doubleday & Company. Douglas Black, president from that year until 1963, attracted numerous public figures to the firm, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Harry S. Truman, Robert Taft and Douglas MacArthur. He also expanded Doubleday's publishing programme by opening two new printing plants, creating a new line of quality paperbacks under the Anchor Books imprint, attracting new book clubs to its book club division, opening thirty new retail stores in twenty-five cities and opening new editorial offices in San Francisco, London and Paris. By 1947, Doubleday was the largest and most influential publisher in the US, with annual sales of over thirty million books. Doubleday developed many of the sales strategies which became standard practice in publishing, pioneering concepts such as mass-marketing tech- niques, mail-order merchandising, subscription book clubs and reprint publication. The effectiveness of its advertising, design, promotion and publicity organisation was well recognised and respected in the trade. In 1986 the company was sold to German media conglomerate Bertels- mann for a reported $475 million. In 1988, portions of the firm became part of the Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, which in turn became a division of Random House in 1998. In 2008/9, the Doubleday imprint merged with Knopf Publishing to form the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, which is now part of Penguin Random House. Ken McCormick in 1963 Among the many talented individuals who contributed to the growth and success of Doubleday was Kenneth Dale "Ken" McCormick (1906-1997) who, in a career spanning more than fifty years, distinguished himself as one of the leading figures in American publishing. McCormick, son of a Methodist minister, was born in Madison, New Jersey but grew up in Minnesota and Oregon, where he graduated from Salem's Willamette University in 1928. By 1930 he was back on the East Coast, working as a sales clerk in Doubleday's Penn Station, New York bookstore. After joining the company's Editorial department in 1934, within four years he was Chief associate editor, then, from 1942 to 1971, Editor in chief. He served from 1948 to 1971 as company Vice-president and from 1949 to 1971 as a director. From 1971 (when he would have been sixty-five) until 1987, he was the firm's Senior consulting editor. A sympathetic counsellor and creative critic, McCormick was well endowed with the attributes any successful editor needs. He was described in the New York Times as "possibly the dean of American editors"3 and "a titan";4 Publisher's Weekly called his standing "legendary".5 On the day in 1971 he stepped down from his role as Editor in chief, the three best-selling novels in the USA were QB VII by Leon Uris, The Passions of the Mind by Irving Stone and The Throne of Saturn by Allen Drury – all edited by McCormick. John Sargent, Doubleday's president at that time, wrote of him in 1995: He was the most talented editor I ever worked with. He had a knack of treating a first novelist with the same attention, care, sympathy, editorial skill and enthusiasm as he would treat an Irving Stone or Robert Graves or an Eisenhower; they became equally his admirers and friends.6 In the period 1950 to 1985, Doubleday published twenty-nine WG titles, including an initial eight in six years – but the man who accepted the first, thereby securing the author's fortune and future as a writer, was McCor- mick. Here's WG: In 1949 … Ken McCormick, chief editor of Doubleday, was in London on one of his scouting trips and my newly acquired agent Audrey Heath gave him Cordelia to read; he bought it for publication in the United States, where it came out in 1950 7 … Before the book was published Doubleday sold it to [book club] the Literary Guild, who printed half a million copies in hardback and sold considerably more. The trade edition did well – and it was well reviewed ... From 1950 until 1970, three-quarters of my affluence came from across the Atlantic.8 WG titles published by Doubleday: 1950: 19 January: Cordelia; 24 August: Night Without Stars 1951: The Renegade (i.e. Ross Poldark, revised and retitled) 1953: 19 February: Demelza (revised text); 17 September: Fortune is a Woman 1954: Venture Once More (i.e. Jeremy Poldark revised and retitled) 1955: 3 February: The Last Gamble (i.e. Warleggan retitled); 25 August: The Little Walls 1956: The Sleeping Partner 1958: 16 January: Greek Fire; 3 July: The Wreck of the Grey Cat (i.e. The Forgotten Story retitled) 1960: The Tumbled House 1961: Marnie 9 1964: The Grove of Eagles 1966: After the Act 1967: January: Take My Life; June: The Walking Stick 1968: Night Journey 1970: Angell, Pearl and Little God 1972: 1 February: The Japanese Girl; 27 October: The Span- ish Armadas 1974: The Black Moon 1975: Woman in the Mirror 1977: The Four Swans 1978: The Angry Tide 1980: The Merciless Ladies 1982: The Stranger from the Sea 1983: The Miller's Dance 1985: The Loving Cup Due to his fifty-five-year-long association with the company, his interest in detailing its history and surely because he also realised their immense cultural significance, in 1985 McCormick initiated a project to select and preserve Doubleday's records, from the firm's earliest late-nineteenth- century beginnings to the then present day, with the finished work to be gifted, with the blessing of all directors, to the Library of Congress (LC) and thus posterity. Throughout its existence, Doubleday's publishing list included best-selling popular authors such as Arnold Bennett, Noel Coward, Daphne du Maurier, Arthur Hailey, W. Somerset Maugham and P. G. Wodehouse, as well as specialised books in the arts, natural history and the sciences, politics, sociology and religion. Doubleday was the publisher of such significant political titles as Dwight D. Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe and Harry S. Truman's two-volume memoir, best-selling novels such as Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny and Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy and Bruce Catton's prize-winning books about the Civil War. All these writers are represented in McCormick's files, which document not only the symbiotic relationship of author and editor but also the various editorial and production stages through which a book must pass before its final publication. Other files worthy of note include those of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Paul Gallico, Alex Haley, O. Henry, Robert F. Kennedy, Rudyard Kipling, T. E. Lawrence, Leon Trotsky, Leon Uris, Hugh Walpole, H. G. Wells and many more – including Winston Graham. McCormick's own contribution to the collection consists of cover sheets which he wrote as accompanying notes to many of the files he selected for preservation. As a keen observer of the personalities and publishing trends of his day, McCormick provides background information and insightful sketches that explain and expand the contents of the files. His notes also relate the personal foibles and professional idiosyncrasies of authors and editors alike and elucidate the peculiar publishing history of specific books and manuscripts. Written between 1985 and 1992 the notes function as McCormick's personal narrative, enriching the cultural documentation implicit in the files themselves. The Library of Congress McCormick / Doubleday archive is huge – 60,000 items in 171 containers occupying 68 linear feet of shelf-space – and split between boxes 41 and 42, the Finding Aid records eight folders pertaining to Winston Graham: four dealing with Angell, Pearl and Little God, two with The Spanish Armadas, one with The Dark Moon (sic) and one with general correspondence. In Memoirs, 2.9, WG described McCormick as "the most distinguished editor Doubleday have ever had" – and the editor's reciprocal view was equally respectful. Writing to WG's American literary agent Carol Brandt in 1961, McCormick said of her client: I don't think there is an author on [our] list to whom we feel more friendliness or more respect than Winston Graham.