Emecé Editores is an Argentine

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 publishing house, currently a subsidiary of Grupo Planeta.

The company was founded in 1939 by Mariano Medina del Río, shortly after his arrival from Spain, with the literary collaboration of Álvaro de las Casas, and the support of Medina's former classmate Carlos Braun Menéndez. Emecé's name is derived from the first letters of some of the founders' names (specifically, Mariano, Carlos, Medina, and Casas). In Spanish, M

M

M is the thirteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter M is derived from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu . Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water...

 is pronounced "eme" and C "ce".

During its early years, the company specialized in books about the region of Galicia, some written in the region's native language

Galician language

Galician is a language of the Western Ibero-Romance branch, spoken in Galicia, an autonomous community located in northwestern Spain, where it is co-official with Castilian Spanish, as well as in border zones of the neighbouring territories of Asturias and Castile and León.Modern Galician and...

. In the subsequent decade, the company established its flagship series, "The Emecé Library of Universal Works" (La Biblioteca Emecé de Obras Universales). To this day, Emecé precedes its works with an epigram from Miguel de Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...

, to whom the series is dedicated: that books "are honest entertainment, delight with their language, and amaze and suspend [disbelief] with their invention." (Spanish: "Sean de honesto entretenimiento, deleiten con el lenguaje y admiren y suspendan con la invención.")

Of the thousands of authors published by Emecé during the six decades of its existence, two names stand out—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry , officially Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger, comte de Saint Exupéry , was a French writer, poet and pioneering aviator. He became a laureate of France's highest literary awards, and in 1939 was the winner of the U.S. National Book Award...

, creator and illustrator of The Little Prince

The Little Prince

The Little Prince , first published in 1943, is a novella and the most famous work of the French aristocrat writer, poet and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ....

, the most popular book published by Emecé; and Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...

, arguably the most important Argentine author of the 20th century, whose work was edited and published by Emecé for forty-five years.

A group of distinguished collaborators edited several distinct collections at once. Eduardo Mallea

Eduardo Mallea

Eduardo Mallea was an Argentine essayist, cultural critic, writer and diplomat. In 1931 he became editor of the literary magazine of La Nación.-Work:...

 created The Navy, The Chimera, and Great Essayists (El Navío, La Quimera y Grandes Ensayistas). Inspired by Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares

Adolfo Bioy Casares

Adolfo Bioy Casares was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel.-Biography:Adolfo Bioy...

, Emecé created The Seventh Circle (El Séptimo Círculo), a collection of detective fiction which has grown to include 350 titles, including the major works of Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler

Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...

, James M. Cain

James M. Cain

James Mallahan Cain was an American author and journalist. Although Cain himself vehemently opposed labeling, he is usually associated with the hardboiled school of American crime fiction and seen as one of the creators of the roman noir...

, and James Hadley Chase

James Hadley Chase

James Hadley Chase is the best-known pseudonym of the British writer Rene Brabazon Raymond who also wrote under the names James L. Docherty, Ambrose Grant, and Raymond Marshall. Chase is one of the best known thriller writers of all time...

.

Where possible, Emecé has attempted to include major works of artistic and cultural interest, ranging from Toynbee

Arnold J. Toynbee

Arnold Joseph Toynbee CH was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934–1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global...

, Malraux

André Malraux

André Malraux DSO was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman. Having traveled extensively in Indochina and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine , which won the Prix Goncourt...

, Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

, Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky

Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...

, Francastel

Pierre Francastel

Pierre Francastel was a French art historian, best known for his use of sociological method.Francastel's initial period of study was in literature, at the Sorbonne...

, and Huyghe

René Huyghe

René Huyghe was a French writer on the history, psychology and philosophy of art. He was also a curator at the Louvre's department of paintings , a professor at the Collège de France and from 1960 a member of the Académie française...

 to deluxe editions of Don Quixote. The house is known for its detailed coverage of Argentine topics, including Martín Fierro

Martín Fierro

Martín Fierro is a 2,316 line epic poem by the Argentine writer José Hernández. The poem was originally published in two parts, El Gaucho Martín Fierro and La Vuelta de Martín Fierro . The poem is, in part, a protest against the modernist tendencies of Argentine president Domingo Faustino Sarmiento...

, the works of Bonifacio del Carril (in particular his Monumenta Iconográfica), records of Argentina's Pre-Columbian inhabitants (such as the Inca and Diaguita

Diaguita

The Diaguita, also called Diaguita-Calchaquí, are a group of South American indigenous peoples. The Diaguita culture developed between the 8th and 16th centuries in what are now the provinces of Salta, Catamarca, La Rioja and Tucumán in northwestern Argentina, and in the Atacama and Coquimbo...

), and the history of the gaucho

Gaucho

Gaucho is a term commonly used to describe residents of the South American pampas, chacos, or Patagonian grasslands, found principally in parts of Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Chile, and Southern Brazil...

.

In 1948, beginning with the publication of The Ides of March

Ides of March (novel)

The Ides of March is an epistolary novel by Thornton Wilder that was published in 1948. It is, in the author's words, 'a fantasia on certain events and persons of the last days of the Roman republic... Historical reconstruction is not among the primary aims of this work'...

by Thornton Wilder

Thornton Wilder

Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...

 and The Stranger

The Stranger (novel)

The Stranger or The Outsider is a novel by Albert Camus published in 1942. Its theme and outlook are often cited as examples of existentialism, though Camus did not consider himself an existentialist; in fact, its content explores various philosophical schools of thought, including absurdism, as...

by Albert Camus

Albert Camus

Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...

, Emecé established its "Great Novelists" collection, which continues to this day. Many celebrated writers, including Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

, William Faulkner

William Faulkner

William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...

, Alberto Moravia

Alberto Moravia

Alberto Moravia, born Alberto Pincherle was an Italian novelist and journalist. His novels explored matters of modern sexuality, social alienation, and existentialism....

, François Mauriac

François Mauriac

François Mauriac was a French author; member of the Académie française ; laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature . He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur .-Biography:...

, Camilo José Cela

Camilo José Cela

Camilo José Cela y Trulock, 1st Marquis of Iria Flavia was a Spanish novelist and short story writer. He was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in Literature "for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man's vulnerability".-Biography:Cela published his...

, Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

, Graham Greene

Graham Greene

Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world...

, Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...

, Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...

, Jorge Amado

Jorge Amado

Jorge Leal Amado de Faria was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 49 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands in 1978...

, Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer

Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...

, Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...

, have been included in the collection. It has since widened its scope to include writers of popular fiction, such as Arthur Hailey

Arthur Hailey

Arthur Hailey was a British/Canadian novelist.- Biography :Born in Luton, Bedfordshire, England, Hailey served in the Royal Air Force from the start of World War II during 1939 until 1947, when he went to live in Canada. Hailey's last novel, Detective , is a mystery told from the perspective of a...

, Erich Segal

Erich Segal

Erich Wolf Segal was an American author, screenwriter, and educator. He was best-known for writing the novel Love Story , a best-seller, and writing the motion picture of the same name, which was a major hit....

, Frederick Forsyth

Frederick Forsyth

Frederick Forsyth, CBE is an English author and occasional political commentator. He is best known for thrillers such as The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Fourth Protocol, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fist of God, Icon, The Veteran, Avenger, The Afghan and The Cobra.-...

, Colleen McCullough

Colleen McCullough

Colleen McCullough-Robinson, , is an internationally acclaimed Australian author.-Life:McCullough was born in Wellington, in outback central west New South Wales, in 1937 to James and Laurie McCullough. Her mother was a New Zealander of part-Māori descent. During her childhood, her family moved...

, Stephen King

Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...

, John le Carré

John le Carré

David John Moore Cornwell , who writes under the name John le Carré, is an author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, Cornwell worked for MI5 and MI6, and began writing novels under the pseudonym "John le Carré"...

, Leon Uris

Leon Uris

Leon Marcus Uris was an American novelist, known for his historical fiction and the deep research that went into his novels. His two bestselling books were Exodus, published in 1958, and Trinity, in 1976.-Life:...

, Tom Clancy

Tom Clancy

Thomas Leo "Tom" Clancy, Jr. is an American author, best known for his technically detailed espionage, military science, and techno thriller storylines set during and in the aftermath of the Cold War, along with video games on which he did not work, but which bear his name for licensing and...

, Ken Follett

Ken Follett

Ken Follett is a Welsh author of thrillers and historical novels. He has sold more than 100 million copies of his works. Four of his books have reached the number 1 ranking on the New York Times best-seller list: The Key to Rebecca, Lie Down with Lions, Triple, and World Without End.-Early...

, Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke

Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein,...

, Judith Krantz

Judith Krantz

Judith Krantz , is an American novelist who writes in the romance genre. Her works include Scruples, Princess Daisy, and Till We Meet Again.-Early years:...

, Mary Higgins Clark

Mary Higgins Clark

Mary Theresa Eleanor Higgins Clark Conheeney , known professionally as Mary Higgins Clark, is an American author of suspense novels...

, Scott Turow

Scott Turow

Scott F. Turow is an American author and a practicing lawyer. Turow has written eight fiction and two nonfiction books, which have been translated into over 20 languages and have sold over 25 million copies...

, Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz

Dean Ray Koontz is a prolific American author best known for his novels which could be described broadly as suspense thrillers. He also frequently incorporates elements of horror, science fiction, mystery, and satire. A number of his books have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller List, with...

, Michael Crichton

Michael Crichton

John Michael Crichton , best known as Michael Crichton, was an American best-selling author, producer, director, and screenwriter, best known for his work in the science fiction, medical fiction, and thriller genres. His books have sold over 200 million copies worldwide, and many have been adapted...

, Wilbur Smith

Wilbur Smith

Wilbur Addison Smith is a best-selling novelist. His writings include 16th and 17th century tales about the founding of the southern territories of Africa and the subsequent adventures and international intrigues relevant to these settlements. His books often fall into one of three series...

, and Sidney Sheldon

Sidney Sheldon

Sidney Sheldon was an Academy Award-winning American writer. His TV works spanned a 20-year period during which he created The Patty Duke Show , I Dream of Jeannie and Hart to Hart , but he became most famous after he turned 50 and began writing best-selling novels such as Master of the Game ,...

.

However, Emecé does not confine itself to works of fiction. It has published Papillon

Papillon (autobiography)

Papillon is a memoir by convicted felon and fugitive Henri Charrière, first published in France in 1969. It became an instant bestseller. It was translated into English from the original French by June P. Wilson and Walter B. Michaels for a 1970 edition, and by author Patrick O'Brian...

by Henri Charrière

Henri Charrière

Henri Charrière was a convicted murderer chiefly known as the author of Papillon, a hugely successful memoir of his incarceration in and escape from a penal colony in French Guiana....

, Roots

Roots: The Saga of an American Family

Roots: The Saga of an American Family is a novel written by Alex Haley and first published in 1976. It tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent and sold into slavery in the United States, and follows his life and the lives of his descendants in the U.S....

by Alex Haley

Alex Haley

Alexander Murray Palmer Haley was an African-American writer. He is best known as the author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and the coauthor of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.-Early life:...

, The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

M. Scott Peck

Morgan Scott Peck was an American psychiatrist and best-selling author, best known for his first book, The Road Less Traveled, published in 1978.-Biography:...

, as well as the works of Leo Buscaglia

Leo Buscaglia

Felice Leonardo "Leo" Buscaglia Ph.D. , also known as "Dr Love," was an author and motivational speaker, and a professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Southern California.-Biography:...

 and Jaime Barylko.

In 1954, the Emecé Literary Prize was created, and was the competition of its kind to be established in Argentina. To this day it remains a means for new authors to gain recognition. Quite a few literary figures achieved success as a result of winning the prize, including Beatriz Guido

Beatriz Guido

Beatriz Guido was an Argentine novelist and screenwriter.Guido was born in Rosario, Santa Fe Province, the daughter of architect Ángel Guido and of Uruguayan actress Berta Eirin...

, Dalmiro Saenz, Griselda Gambaro

Griselda Gambaro

Griselda Gambaro is an Argentine writer, whose novels, plays, short stories, story tales, essays and novels for teenagers often concern the political violence in her home country that would develop into the Dirty War. One recurring theme is the desaparecidos and the attempts to recover their...

, María Esther de Miguel, María Granata, and Angélica Gorodischer

Angélica Gorodischer

Angélica Gorodischer is an Argentine writer known for her collection of short stories, which belong to a wide variety of genres, including science-fiction, fantasy, crime and stories with a feminist perspective....

. They, along with Bioy Casares, Ernesto Sabato

Ernesto Sabato

Ernesto Sabato , was an Argentine writer, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America"...

, Eduardo Gudiño Kieffer

Eduardo Gudiño Kieffer

Eduardo Gudiño Kieffer was an Argentine writer, born in Esperanza, Santa Fe. From his mother side, he is related to Argentinean painter Sebastian Spreng, also a native of Esperanza....

, Isidoro Blaisten

Isidoro Blaisten

Isidoro Blaisten was an Argentine writer.Son of David Blaisten and Dora Gliclij, Blaisten was born in Concordia, Argentina. His family was among the many Argentine Jews who populated rural areas in Entre Ríos Province during the early 20th century...

, Abelardo Castillo

Abelardo Castillo

Abelardo Castillo is an Argentine writer, born in the city of San Pedro, Buenos Aires. He practised amateur boxing in his youth...

, Abel Posse

Abel Posse

Abel Parentini Posse, born Córdoba, Argentina, on 7 January 1934, is an Argentine diplomat and writer. He was designated at a diplomatic mission in Venice by Alejandro Agustín Lanusse in 1973 and hold similar offices during the following Argentine governments, both military and civilian...

, and César Aira

César Aira

César Aira is an Argentine writer and translator, and an exponent of Argentine contemporary literature. He has published over fifty books of stories, novels and essays...

, number among more than three hundred Argentine writers in the Emecé catalogue.

Emecé is one of the largest publishers in Argentina. Its catalogue contains books on history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

, politics

Politics

Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...

, economics

Economics

Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...

, art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

, religion

Religion

Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

, anthropology

Anthropology

Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...

, biography

Biography

A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...

, memoir

Memoir

A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...

s, children's literature

Children's literature

Children's literature is for readers and listeners up to about age twelve; it is often defined in four different ways: books written by children, books written for children, books chosen by children, or books chosen for children. It is often illustrated. The term is used in senses which sometimes...

, humor, cooking

Cookbook

A cookbook is a kitchen reference that typically contains a collection of recipes. Modern versions may also include colorful illustrations and advice on purchasing quality ingredients or making substitutions...

, popular science

Popular science

Popular science, sometimes called literature of science, is interpretation of science intended for a general audience. While science journalism focuses on recent scientific developments, popular science is broad-ranging, often written by scientists as well as journalists, and is presented in many...

, self-help

Self-help

Self-help, or self-improvement, is a self-guided improvement—economically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a substantial psychological basis. There are many different self-help movements and each has its own focus, techniques, associated beliefs, proponents and in some cases, leaders...

 and popular psychology

Popular psychology

The term popular psychology refers to concepts and theories about human mental life and behavior that are purportedly based on psychology and that attain popularity among the general population...

, and the complete works of various authors.