ABRAMS was founded December 14, 1949, by Harry N. Abrams, who was born in London but grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., where his father owned two shoe stores in the Brownsville neighborhood. Adept at both selling shoes and creating art, Abrams attended the National Academy of Art and the Art Students League, where he studied with John Steuart Curry. He got into publishing in his early 20s in a roundabout fashion, working for Sackheim & Scherman, an ad agency whose clients included Doubleday and Simon & Schuster. After working on the Book-of-the-Month Club account, Abrams joined the Club, where he worked for 14 years. He also began collecting art--the ABRAMS office continues to display some pieces dating back to this time.
During his BOMC period, Abrams created the Illustrated Junior Library for Grosset & Dunlap and the Illustrated Modern Library for Bennett Cerf. He began a greeting card company, too, which he sold eventually to Hallmark.
Abrams began his eponymous art book publisher with $100,000 in capital. The first three titles were on Renoir, Van Gogh and El Greco.
Abrams decided to take a risk and began a paperback line to appeal to people who were price-conscious. His comment on this, made during a 1972 oral history interview with Paul Cummings, might apply to much about publishing today: "The point is that if there was no way of surviving under ordinary conditions one might as well take the chance."
ABRAMS, which was independent for many years and then became a subsidiary of Times Mirror, has been owned by La Martinière Groupe in Paris since 1997. "We operate and identify ourselves as an independent publisher," said Jacobs. "And in the spirit of our eponymous founder, we make decisions and set our publishing strategy and tactics and execute them independently as well."
To celebrate its 60th anniversary, ABRAMS has introduced a new corporate logo that includes the tagline "The art of books since 1949." It also has a new website and has officially changed its corporate name from Harry N. Abrams and HNA, Inc., to ABRAMS. The new website includes videos, image galleries, links to editor and author blogs, press listings, an events calendar, institution resources, teachers' guides, newsletters and more.