Sol Stein - Stein and Day

Stein and Day

In 1962 Stein founded the New York-based publishing firm Stein and Day with his then-wife, Patricia Day. Stein was both publisher and editor-in-chief of the firm. The publishing house’s first book was Elia Kazan’s America America, which sold three million copies in hardback, paperback, and book club editions. The success of many of Stein and Day’s books was attributable in part to the amount of publicity work that Stein and Day did for each book. Stein worked with Kazan daily for five months on Kazan’s s first novel The Arrangement, which was #1 on The New York Times bestseller list for 37 consecutive weeks.

The firm relocated from Manhattan to Briarcliff Manor, New York in 1975, and published about 100 books each year until the company was compelled to close its doors, the background of which was the subject of Stein’s nonfiction book, A Feast for Lawyers. The New York Times said, “He has produced an appalling, Dickensian portrait of the entire system...ought to be read not only by executives facing Chapter 11 but by all entrepreneurs and indeed by anyone who fantasizes about running his own company." Stein’s book was honored by The American Bankruptcy Association at its annual convention in Washington, D.C. Columbia University now hosts the Stein and Day Archives, which chronicles the firm’s 27 years of existence. Stein and Day was the originating publisher of works by Leslie Fiedler, David Frost, Jack Higgins, Dylan Thomas, Budd Schulberg, Claude Brown, Bertram Wolfe, Mary Cheever, Harry Lorayne, Barbara Howar, Elaine Morgan, Wanda Landowska, Marilyn Monroe, Oliver Lange, and F. Lee Bailey, among others. Stein and Day was also the American publisher of J. B. Priestley, Eric Partridge, Anthony Sampson, Maxim Gorky, Che Guevara, L. P. Hartley, and George Bernard Shaw.