Allyn and Bacon was founded in 1868 by John Allyn as an educational publishing company with a focus on the areas of education, humanities, and social sciences. John Allyn went into business initially as John Allyn, Publisher and Importer after purchasing the list of Harvard University Bookstore’s standard text books from the firm Sever and Francis. In 1888, George A. Bacon entered into partnership with Allyn, creating the publishing company Allyn and Bacon, with its first office located in Boston, Massachusetts. Prior to the partnership, Bacon was the principal of Syracuse High School and the publisher of "The Academy," a journal of secondary education.
In 1895, "The Classical Series" was published by Allyn and Bacon and overtook all other competition in Latin education in the United States. The company initially specialized in high school textbooks, and expanded to include elementary school textbooks by the 1930s, and college textbooks by the 1950s. George A. Bacon’s sons Charles E. Bacon and Paul V. Bacon joined the firm’s partnership in 1919, and by 1923 took over as partners after the death of John Allyn in 1921 and the retirement of George A. Bacon in 1923. In 1930, George A. Bacon died and Charles E. and Paul V. Bacon became sole partners and owners of Allyn and Bacon. After the death of Paul V. Bacon in 1949, the Allyn and Bacon partnership passed to his children, Paul V. Bacon, Jr. and Nancy B. Johnson. In 1951, Richard Ettinger, who was the founder of the publishing company Prentice Hall, purchased Allyn and Bacon and incorporated it into a publicly owned company, Allyn and Bacon, Inc. In 1952, the company expanded its outreach further with the development of a College Division. Allyn and Bacon, Inc. remained an independent company until it was purchased by Esquire, Inc. in 1981. Esquire, Inc. was sold to Gulf & Western in 1983, and Allyn and Bacon became part of Simon & Schuster's education division. Pearson PLC purchased the education and reference divisions of Simon & Schuster in 1998, and in 2007, Allyn and Bacon merged with Merrill, also a Pearson company. As of 2023, Allyn and Bacon was an imprint of Pearson Education, an education publishing and technology company under Pearson PLC.
