Ginn & Company
Ginn & Company was an American textbook publisher based in Boston, founded in 1867 by Edwin Ginn (1838–1914) together with his brother Fred, initially under the name "Ginn Brothers." The firm went through a series of name changes—becoming "Ginn & Heath" in 1876 in partnership with Daniel Collamore Heath, before being established as Ginn & Company in 1885. By the time it published the first volume of the Harvard Oriental Series in 1891, the firm was already a major producer of educational texts across all levels and disciplines, and would go on to become especially known for its elementary school textbooks. In 1895, the company built the Athenaeum Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to house its printing operations. Edwin Ginn, raised in a Universalist family with strong pacifist convictions, later devoted much of his energy to philanthropy, founding the International School of Peace in Boston in 1910 (later known as the World Peace Foundation). Ginn & Company was acquired by Xerox in 1968, later passed to Simon & Schuster, and was eventually folded into Pearson Education in 1998, with the imprint discontinued the following year.
