Street & Smith

The publishing partnership of Francis Scott Street and Francis Shubael Smith began in 1855 when they took over a broken-down fiction magazine. The pair bought the existing New York Weekly Dispatch in 1858. Smith was the company president from 1855 until his 1887 retirement, succeeded by his son Ormond Gerald Smith. Following the death of Street in 1883 and the death of Smith in 1887, Ormond Smith remained company president until his death in 1933. That same year, Street & Smith bought titles from Clayton magazine, including Astounding Stories. In 1938, Allen L. Grammer became company president after having spent over twenty years as an efficiency expert for Curtis Publishing Company and making a small fortune inventing a new printing process.

Street & Smith published comic books from 1940–1949, their most notable titles being The Shadow, from their pulp magazine line, Super-Magician Comics, Supersnipe Comics, True Sport Picture Stories, Bill Barnes/Air Ace and Doc Savage Comics, also from pulp magazine line. Several H. P. Lovecraft tales first appeared in their popular publication Amazing Stories and Isaac Asimov was oft-included in Astounding Science Fiction, a periodical where Robert Heinlein made his first appearance.

CondX Nast Publications bought the company in 1959 and continued to use the Street & Smith imprint on its sports magazines until 2007. The Street & Smith name survives today as the named publisher of Sports Business Journal, a Condé Nast periodical.

First Edition Identification

In first editions from Street & Smith, the book title is the last title on the first page of book advertisements at the front of the book and no additional printings indicated on the copyright page.