Silver Burdett Company

Silver Burdett is an American primary education textbook publishing imprint owned by Pearson Education, which is a division of media conglomerate Pearson PLC. Silver Burdett was first formed as a company in 1888 when Frank W. Burdett purchased a controlling interest in the textbook publishing company, Silver and Company. In 1962, Silver Burdett was acquired by Time Inc., and it became the distributor of Time-Life Books to schools and libraries. In 1965 Silver Burdett became the first division of the General Learning Corporation, a collaboration between Time Inc. and General Electric. Simon & Schuster purchased Silver Burdett in 1986, and merged it with Ginn and Company, a leading elementary and high school textbook publisher - which formed the imprint Silver Burdett & Ginn. In 1998, Pearson PLC acquired Simon & Schuster's educational businesses, which included Silver Burdett & Ginn from Simon & Schuster's parent Viacom (Viacom International Inc.), and created Pearson Education.