- The Century Co. had no consistent way of marking a first printing, and before 1927 the copyright page will not separate a first printing from a reprint. Check the book against an author bibliography.
- After the 1933 merger, Appleton-Century and its successor Appleton-Century-Crofts marked the printing with a numeral at the foot of the last page: (1) or 1 for a first printing, (2) for a second, and so on.
Publisher
The Century Co.
The Century Co. was a New York publisher (1881 to 1933) of The Century magazine, St. Nicholas and The Century Dictionary, later merged into Appleton-Century.
- Editions tracked
- 24
- First editions
- 14
- Books
- 24
- Years
- 1893 to 1933
The Century Co. is a publisher active from 1893. We track 24 editions it published between 1893 and 1933, 14 of them first editions across 24 books. How The Century Co. marked its first editions is set out below, with a checker for the year on your title page.
About The Century Co.
The Century Co. was a New York publisher of magazines and books, formed in 1881 when Roswell Smith bought out the magazine business of Scribner and Company and renamed it after the Century Association, a New York club.
Its flagship was The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, the former Scribner's Monthly, edited by Richard Watson Gilder until his death in 1909. The magazine ran excerpts of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1884 and 1885, and a three-year series of Civil War recollections from both sides that became the four-volume Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. The magazine also printed work by Jack London, and the firm published the children's magazine St. Nicholas.
Having bought the American rights to the Scottish Imperial Dictionary in 1882, Century issued The Century Dictionary, edited by William Dwight Whitney and printed by Theodore Low De Vinne: six volumes from 1889 to 1891, ten in 1895 and a reformatted twelve-volume edition in 1911. Its book list included Jean Webster's Daddy-Long-Legs (published on 28 September 1912 after serialisation in the Ladies' Home Journal).
William Morgan Shuster became president in 1915. The Century magazine merged into The Forum in 1930, and in 1933 the company merged with D. Appleton & Company to form Appleton-Century, which joined F. S. Crofts in 1947 as Appleton-Century-Crofts. Meredith bought that firm in 1960 and sold its textbook division to Prentice Hall in 1973.
Holding a copy? The first edition checker shows The Century Co.'s practice for the year on your title page.
Identification
How to identify The Century Co. first editions
Authors
Series
Books
Published by The Century Co.
Frequently asked questions
How do I identify a The Century Co. first edition?
- The Century Co. had no consistent way of marking a first printing, and before 1927 the copyright page will not separate a first printing from a reprint. Check the book against an author bibliography. - After the 1933 merger, Appleton-Century and its successor Appleton-Century-Crofts marked the printing with a numeral at the foot of the last page: (1) or 1 for a first printing, (2) for a second,
How many The Century Co. books does MyVolumes track?
We track 24 editions published by The Century Co., 14 of them first editions, across 24 books.
Where these facts come from
- Century Company, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- The Century Magazine, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- Century Dictionary, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- Daddy-Long-Legs (novel), Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)
- First Edition Identification by Publisher, ILAB (ilab.org)
- Identifying First Editions, Pt. 2, IOBA (ioba.org)
Every fact on this page was checked against the sources listed. Checked 3 November 2026. Reviewed by Harriet Ellis; read how we check facts.