The Overlook Press is an American independent publishing

Small press

Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...

 house based in New York. It was formed in 1971 by Peter Mayer

Peter Mayer

Peter M. Mayer is an American independent publisher who is president of The Overlook Press/Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc., a Woodstock, New York - based publishing company he founded with his father in 1971. At the time of Overlook’s founding, Mayer was head of Avon Books, a large New York - based...

, who had previously worked at Avon

Avon (publishers)

Avon Publications was an American paperback book and comic book publisher. As of 2010, it is an imprint of HarperCollins, publishing primarily romance novels.-History:...

 and Penguin Books

Penguin Books

Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...

, where he was CEO from 1978 to 1998. A general-interest publisher, Overlook has over one thousand titles in print, including fiction, history, biography, drama, and design. Overlook's publishing program consists of nearly 100 new books per year, evenly divided between hardcovers and trade paperbacks. Imprints include Tusk Books, whose format was designed by Milton Glaser

Milton Glaser

Milton Glaser is a graphic designer, best known for the I Love New York logo, his "Bob Dylan" poster, the "DC bullet" logo used by DC Comics from 1977 to 2005, and the "Brooklyn Brewery" logo. He also founded New York Magazine with Clay Felker in 1968.-Biography:Glaser was born into a Hungarian...

.

Writers published by Overlook include Robert Littell

Robert Littell

Robert Littell may refer to:* Robert Littell , New Jersey politician* Robert Littell , American writer...

, Charles McCarry

Charles McCarry

Charles McCarry is an American writer primarily of spy fiction.-Life:McCarry served in the United States Army, where he was a correspondent for Stars and Stripes, has been a small-town newspaperman, and was a speechwriter in the Eisenhower administration. From 1958 to 1967 he worked for the CIA,...

, Mervyn Peake

Mervyn Peake

Mervyn Laurence Peake was an English writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the Gormenghast books. They are sometimes compared to the work of his older contemporary J. R. R...

, Paul Auster

Paul Auster

Paul Benjamin Auster is an American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction and the search for identity and personal meaning in works such as The New York Trilogy , Moon Palace , The Music of Chance , The Book of Illusions and The Brooklyn Follies...

, Penny Vincenzi, Ken Auletta

Ken Auletta

Ken Auletta is an American writer, journalist and media critic for The New Yorker.-Early life and education:Auletta grew up in Brooklyn, the son of an Italian-American father and a Jewish-American mother...

, R. Scott Bakker

R. Scott Bakker

Richard Scott Bakker is a Canadian fantasy author. He grew up on a tobacco farm in the Simcoe area. In 1986 he attended the University of Western Ontario to pursue a degree in Literature and later an MA in Theory and Criticism...

, Joseph Roth

Joseph Roth

Joseph Roth, born Moses Joseph Roth , was an Austrian journalist and novelist, best known for his family saga Radetzky March about the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and for his novel of Jewish life, Job as well as the seminal essay 'Juden auf Wanderschaft' translated in...

, John Crowley

John Crowley

John Crowley is an American author of fantasy, science fiction and mainstream fiction. He studied at Indiana University and has a second career as a documentary film writer...

, Susan Hill

Susan Hill

Susan Hill is an English author of fiction and non-fiction works. Her novels include The Woman in Black, The Mist in the Mirror and I'm the King of the Castle for which she received the Somerset Maugham Award in 1971....

, Edward Albee

Edward Albee

Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...

, Milton Glaser

Milton Glaser

Milton Glaser is a graphic designer, best known for the I Love New York logo, his "Bob Dylan" poster, the "DC bullet" logo used by DC Comics from 1977 to 2005, and the "Brooklyn Brewery" logo. He also founded New York Magazine with Clay Felker in 1968.-Biography:Glaser was born into a Hungarian...

, Walter Moers

Walter Moers

Walter Moers is one of the best-known and commercially most successful German comic creators and authors.-Life and work:...

, David Mamet

David Mamet

David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...

, David Crystal

David Crystal

David Crystal OBE FLSW FBA is a linguist, academic and author.-Background and career:Crystal was born in Lisburn, Northern Ireland. He grew up in Holyhead, North Wales, and Liverpool, England where he attended St Mary's College from 1951....

, P. G. Wodehouse

P. G. Wodehouse

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...

, R.J. Ellory, Elizabeth Abbott, P.F. Kluge, Gerald Seymour, Charles Portis

Charles Portis

Charles McColl Portis is an American author best known for his novels Norwood and the 1968 classic Western novel True Grit , both adapted as films. The latter also inspired a film sequel and made-for-TV movie sequel...

, Richard Zimler

Richard Zimler

Richard Zimler is a best-selling author of fiction. His books, which have earned him a 1994 National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Fiction and the 1998 Herodotus Award, have been published in many countries and translated into more than 20 languages...

, Charles Dickens, Paul Cartledge, John Cowper Powys

John Cowper Powys

-Biography:Powys was born in Shirley, Derbyshire, in 1872, the son of the Reverend Charles Francis Powys , who was vicar of Montacute, Somerset for thirty-two years, and Mary Cowper Johnson, a descendent of the poet William Cowper. He came from a family of eleven children, many of whom were also...

, W. F. Hermans, Edward Albee, Harry Sidebottom, David Mamet, Andre Schwartz-Bart, Peter Quinn, Robert Coover, Katie Arnoldi, Jim Nisbet, Max Frei, Ludmila Ulitskaya, John Cowper Powys, Raymond Loewy

Raymond Loewy

Raymond Loewy was an industrial designer, and the first to be featured on the cover of Time Magazine, on October 31, 1949. Born in France, he spent most of his professional career in the United States...

, Walter R. Brooks

Walter R. Brooks

Walter Rollin Brooks was an American writer best remembered for his short stories and children's books, particularly those about Freddy the Pig and other anthropomorphic animal inhabitants of the "Bean farm" in upstate New York.Born in Rome, New York, Brooks attended college at the University of...

, Nigel Slater, and Les Walker.

In 2002, Overlook acquired Ardis Publishing

Ardis Publishing

Ardis Publishing began in 1971, as the only publishing house outside of Russia dedicated to Russian literature in both English and Russian, Ardis was founded in Ann Arbor, Michigan by husband and wife scholars Carl R. Proffer and Ellendea C. Proffer...

, a publisher of Russian literature

Russian literature

Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia or its émigrés, and to the Russian-language literature of several independent nations once a part of what was historically Russia or the Soviet Union...

 in English. More recently, Overlook took ownership of the venerable British publishing company Duckworth

Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd

-History:Founded in 1898 by Gerald Duckworth, Duckworth is an independent British publisher. It was important in the development of English literature in the first half of the twentieth century, being the publisher of figures such as Virginia Woolf , W. H. Davies, Anthony Powell, John Galsworthy...

.

External links

• The Overlook Press web site