Dell Publishing is an American publishing house founded in 1921 by George T. Delacorte Jr. It began with pulp magazines, comics, and puzzle books before becoming, in the mid-twentieth century, one of the largest and most influential mass-market paperback publishers in the United States.
For decades Dell was a powerhouse of popular paperback fiction, bringing a vast range of novels to a broad American readership at affordable prices. Its colorful paperback editions helped define the mass-market era and made literature widely accessible.
Dell published across genres, from mysteries and thrillers to literary fiction and popular nonfiction, and its imprints reached audiences of all kinds. The company played a significant role in the expansion of paperback reading culture in the twentieth century.
Now part of Penguin Random House, the Dell name continues as an imprint focused on commercial and popular fiction. Its long history reflects the central role paperback publishing played in bringing books to mass audiences.