On the edge of summer, a mother of six from Paris asked me if I could suggest some children’s books.
Easy, I said. Scribners: Five Generations in Publishing by Charles Scribner III is loaded with references to classics that Charles Scribner’s Sons published. Notable titles such as Howard Pyles’ The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883); Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child’s Garden of Verses, published in 1885, the year he debuted on the Scribner roster, followed the next year by Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Kidnapped, along with many other Stevenson classics; and J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, published in 1906, “the first American edition of this children’s classic about the airborne boy who wouldn’t grow up.”
Even better, the author himself wrote:
Tell her my favorite Scribner children’s books were picture books Stone Soup by Marcia Brown (a French tale!), Virginia Kahl’s The Duchess Bakes a Cake, Peter Pan, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, The Devil’s Bridge by my dad, Charles Scribner, Jr., and, last but not least Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge.” (This last book brings fond memories of his mother, Joan Sunderland, a professional skater, reading it to him.)
“My favorite non-Scribner book was, and remains, The Tall Book of Christmas (by Harper & Row), which includes a Scribner-published poem by Eugene Field, as well as the Christmas story by Saints Matthew and Luke!"
Embarking on a publishing adventure
The story of Charles Scribner’s Sons, which Scribner III recounts in his book, is fascinating, beginning in 1846 when, at age 25, the founding Charles Scribner partnered with Isaac Baker, a friend of Scribner’s successful merchant father Uriah Rogers Scribner. Young Scribner was deeply religious, writing to his mother in July 1837 of “the love of a Savior who was so kind and so compassionate to poor and unworthy sinners as to take upon himself our sins and bear in our stead the death of the cross.” Choosing to embark on a career in publishing, he settled in “the old Brick Church… across from City Hall.”
As the firm made their way uptown, they would gradually play an outsized role in shaping world events, not only through the books they published but the authors they enriched, most notably Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Without the funding Churchill acquired through the firm’s impressively produced and massively compelling 6-part, 5-volume series, The World Crisis, published from 1923-31, filling over 2,500 pages with folding maps and plans, Churchill might have never left his “voice in wilderness” status. He certainly would not have bought his beloved home Chartwell.
T.R., too, a close friend of Charles Scribner II (1854-1930), stayed in the limelight in between late 19th-century public service engagements, still a rising star, as a one of the house’s authors. After he left the White House, a colossus astride the world stage, his 1909 Africa hunting trip narrative published in Scribner’s Magazine was the most circulated in company history, even scoring the highest circulation of any high-priced American magazine ever.
A silly book and a new division
Then, too, but for T.R.’s strong recommendation, The Wind in the Willows would not have been published in 1908. “My great-grandfather was against it; he considered it a silly book that ‘only a child would enjoy,’” wrote Scribner III. “But fortunately he was overruled — by none other than President Roosevelt, who told him he was wrong, he must publish it, it was a classic. That was surely the most enduring contribution from the White House to our house.”
So beautifully written, it brings to life the world of Water Rat, Mole, Badger, Toad, Otter, and other of God’s creatures, imprinted with virtue and spirituality. At the tent pole scene, c. page 97, when they are looking for “Portly,” who has gone missing, “… the rich meadow-grass seemed that morning of a freshness and a greenness unsurpassable. Never had they noticed the roses so vivid… ‘This is the place of my song-dream, the place that music played to me,’ whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. ‘Here is this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!’… Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him… he felt wonderfully at peace and happy…” And sure enough they find Portly! A classic, indeed!
Finally, in 1934, Charles Scribner’s Sons established a children’s book division to provide a clear focus for bringing forth even more classics, many of which Scribner III noted, including The Devil’s Bridge, his father’s revised version including a new twist on how the Devil meets his match!
New generations
Charles Scribner III is the fifth Charles Scribner, the generational reset occurring with his grandfather (1890-1952). After graduating from Princeton in 1973 where he taught while completing graduate studies, he joined the family firm at its Fifth Avenue flagship home in the summer of 1975 as the “professional son,” remaining through its sale to Macmillan in 1984 and to Simon and Schuster a decade later. Summer 2004, deciding it was time to bid farewell, he left to write books.
His focus is largely art history, the Baroque period, the history of his publishing family an exception. His book The Shadow of God: A Journey Through Memory, Art, and Faith traces his spiritual, emotional, and intellectual journey guided through the arts including his conversion to Catholicism. He and his wife, Ritchie Harrison Markoe Scribner, an artist and museum educator, are the proud parents of two children, Charles IV and Christopher, along with three grandchildren, including Charles Scribner V. They are blessed to hear stories that their great-great-grandfather, Charles Scribner II, published in a long ago and far away time, read to them by their grandparents.
View the PHOTO GALLERY below to learn more about the Scribner legacy.
Mary Claire Kendall's next book, "Hemingway's Faith," will be coming out at Christmas. It is now available for pre-order.
