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Status | Defunct 1962 |
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Founded | 1948 |
Founder | Martin Greenberg and David A. Kyle |
Defunct | 1962 ![]() |
Country of origin | United States |
Headquarters location | New York City |
Publication types | Books |
Fiction genres | science fiction |
Gnome Press was an American small-press publishing company active 1948-1962 and primarily known for fantasy and science fiction, many later regarded as classics.[1]
Gnome was one of the most eminent of the fan publishers of SF, producing 86 titles in its lifespan. Gnome was important in the transitional period between the genre's publication mainly in magazines up to the 1940s to mainly paperback books in the 1960s, but the company proved too underfunded to make the leap from fan-based publishing to the professional level. The company existed for just over a decade, ultimately failing due to inability to compete with major publishers who also started to publish science fiction.
In its heyday, Gnome published many major American SF authors of the era. In some cases, Gnome was the first to collect in book form narratives that were first published as separate stories, with Robert E. Howard's Conan series (published in six books from 1950 – 1955) and Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (published in three books from 1951 – 1953),