In the early years, the aims of the Elsevier company were relatively simple: publish good quality editions of literary and scholarly classics and stay in business while doing so. For the next 50 years four successive generations of sons and grandsons did just that. They kept things relatively simple — a wise move for a publishing company that did not employ more than 10 people until the 1940s. This is not to say that during these years the company did not move forward. By 1887, just seven years after its founding, Elsevier’s operations had moved from Rotterdam to the publishing center of Amsterdam. With that move came the company’s first success — obtaining the Dutch rights to Jules Verne’s Illustrated Travels (in 57 volumes).

Publication of Verne’s Travels was followed by the launch of the A.J. Prins Illustrated Encyclopedia, and it was this endeavor that best represented the ongoing focus of the new Elsevier. Over the next 40 years Elsevier would slowly develop a specialty in publishing encyclopedias that would ultimately change the company’s direction. By the 1930s, the company was far more focused on the publication of textbooks, science handbooks, and encyclopedias than the reproduction of literary classics. In spite of its growing reputation for publishing excellent scholarly titles however, the company was constantly overdrawn at the bank and struggling to support its handful of employees. It was only after the end of WWII, when Elsevier began to seriously immerse itself in the business of international scientific publication, that the company got on to a sound financial footing and began the journey toward becoming the world’s largest scientific, technical and medical (STM) publisher.

Science Without Boundaries: 1933-1956