The Macmillan Company
—Mr. George P. Brett, the present President, with the proprietors of Macmillan & Company, Ltd., London, the people who had been interested in the agency of Macmillan & Company previously operating in the United States, undertook the organization of the corporation, The Macmillan Company, in this country in 1896. Mr. Brett has been the President of the American corporation since that date.
There have been several heads of the Educational Department. It was organized first under the direction of Dr. F. L. Sevenoak, who gave a part of his time to this work, the balance being devoted to teaching. He was succeeded by James R. McDonald, who filled the position until the fall of 1902, when he was succeeded by William H. Ives. In 1906 Mr. Ives was succeeded by F. C. Tenney, who filled the position until July, 1912. At that time A. H. Nelson became the head of the Educational Department and held the position until July, 1920, when Charles H. Seaver, who now occupies it, succeeded Mr. Nelson.
School textbooks were published in America by Macmillan & Company before the time when The Macmillan Company was formed as an American corporation, the records showing the publication of Hall and Knight’s Elementary Algebra and Algebra for Beginners in 1895, Tarr’s Elements of Physical Geography in 1895, and Channing’s Student’s History of the United States in April, 1896. Immediately following the establishment of the American corporation, there was published Miller’s Trigonometry in 1896, and in 1897 the following books appeared: Tarr’s High School Geology, Nichols’ High School Physics, Lewis’s Writing English, Tarr’s First Book in Physical Geography, McLellan and Ames’ Arithmetic, Hall and Knight’s Algebra for Colleges and Schools, Davenport’s Elementary Economics, Murche’s Science Readers. The McLellan and Ames Arithmetic and the Murche Science Readers were the first textbooks published for elementary grades. The Macmillan Company first undertook the work of publishing books for that field in the fall of 1897.