Thorndike Press is an American large print reprint publisher, owned by G. K. Hall from 1990 and by Gale, now part of Cengage, since 1999. Its books are never first editions of the text.
Thorndike Press is a publisher active from 1981. We track 452 editions it published between 1981 and 2024, 0 of them first editions across 452 books. How Thorndike Press marked its first editions is set out below, with a checker for the year on your title page.
About Thorndike Press
Thorndike Press is an American large print publisher, now part of Gale, the library and reference publisher owned by Cengage.
Its books of the 1980s carry the imprint of Thorndike, Maine, and by the 2000s the press gave Waterville, Maine as its address. It reissues books that trade publishers have already brought out, reset in large type, and Gale now sells it with separate adult and youth large print lists.
In 1990 Thorndike was bought by G. K. Hall & Co., an early specialist in large print editions of best sellers and until then its main American competitor; a Thorndike Press Large Print Paperback Series appears among G. K. Hall's series. In 1999 Thomson Gale bought Macmillan Library Reference from Pearson, and Thorndike Press and G. K. Hall came with it. Gale, founded in Detroit in 1954, has been part of Cengage since 2007 and also owns the large print lists Wheeler Publishing and Christian Large Print.
For some titles Thorndike shared a printing with the British large print house Chivers of Bath, with the American edition under Thorndike and the UK edition under Chivers or its Windsor and Paragon imprints.
Holding a copy? The first edition checker shows Thorndike Press's practice for the year on your title page.
Identification
How to identify Thorndike Press first editions
What to look for
What a collector should know first: Thorndike is a large print reprint house. It resets texts that another publisher has already issued, so a Thorndike copy is never the first edition of the work. At most it is the first large print edition, which matters to a few completist author collectors and very little to the market.
1980s to 1990s
Each Thorndike book follows an earlier trade edition of the same text from another publisher; treat it as a later edition whatever the copyright page says.
Author bibliographies that list these books record them as large print editions, the earliest being the first large print edition, not as first editions.
From 2000
Still a large print reprint house, under Gale ownership from 1999; nothing under this imprint is a first edition of the text.
How do I identify a Thorndike Press first edition?
What a collector should know first: Thorndike is a large print reprint house. It resets texts that another publisher has already issued, so a Thorndike copy is never the first edition of the work. At most it is the first large print edition, which matters to a few completist author collectors and very little to the market. 1980s to 1990s - Each Thorndike book follows an earlier trade edition of th
How many Thorndike Press books does MyVolumes track?
We track 452 editions published by Thorndike Press, 0 of them first editions, across 452 books.
