Dell

About Dell

Dell is an American publisher founded in New York City in 1921 by George T. Delacorte Jr. It began with pulp magazines and comics, became one of the leading US paperback houses, and now survives as an imprint within Penguin Random House.

Delacorte started the business in a one-room office on West 23rd Street with $10,000 and a staff of two. Its first successful magazine was the pulp I Confess, and the satirical Ballyhoo was later a major hit. Dell concentrated on pulps and comics, running its Dell Comics line from 1929 to 1974, and moved into paperback books in the early 1940s. Many early Dell paperbacks carried a map of the story's setting on the back cover, so collectors call them "mapbacks". Later lines included Laurel Editions of classics, Dell First Editions (paperback originals by writers such as John D. MacDonald, Jim Thompson and Elmore Leonard), Yearling and Laurel-Leaf for young readers, and the hardback imprint Delacorte Press. The Dial Press also became part of the Dell group. By the mid-1960s Dell was one of the three leading American paperback publishers.

Doubleday bought Dell in 1976. Bertelsmann bought Doubleday in 1986 and formed Bantam Doubleday Dell. Bertelsmann then acquired Random House in 1998, bringing Bantam Dell into the Random House group, and in 2013 Random House merged with Penguin to form Penguin Random House. Dell Magazines was sold separately in 1996.

Delacorte died at his Fifth Avenue home on 4 May 1991.