Godine
Share
Godine is an independent publisher of singular books for independently-minded readers. At Godine, quality has remained foremost. The company was founded in 1970.
Godine is a small publishing house located in Boston, Massachusetts, producing between twenty and thirty titles per year and maintaining an active reprint program. The company is independent (a rarity these days) and its list tends to reflect the individual tastes and interests of its president and founder, David Godine. Our aim is to identify the best work and to produce it in the best way possible. All of our hardcover and softcover books are printed on acid-free paper. Many hardcovers are still bound in full cloth. The list is deliberately eclectic and features works that many other publishers can't or won't support, books that won't necessarily become bestsellers but that still deserve publication. In a world of spin-offs and commercial "product," Godine's list stands apart by offering original fiction and non-fiction of the highest rank, rediscovered masterworks, translations of outstanding world literature, poetry, art, photography, and beautifully designed books for children. After receiving degrees at Dartmouth College and Harvard University, David Godine worked for Leonard Baskin, the renowned typographer and printmaker, and Harold McGrath, his master printer. David Godine opened a printing shop the following year in a deserted barn in Brookline, Massachusetts. His first books, printed on his own presses, were nearly all letterpress, limited editions printed on high-quality rag or handmade paper. Many of these early volumes are now collector's items. In 1980, the company initiated its children's program, publishing a number of books that have become classics: Mary Azarian's A Farmer's Alphabet; Dylan Thomas's holiday classic A Child's Christmas in Wales, illustrated by Edward Ardizzone; the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome; and of course, the Godine editions of Frances Hodgson Burnett's timeless works, The Secret Garden and A Little Princess, which together have sold close to half a million hardcover copies. More recently, Godine has launched two new series: Imago Mundi, a line of original books devoted to photography and the graphic arts; and Verba Mundi, featuring the most notable contemporary world literature in translation. Volumes in the Imago Mundi series, which has received praise from reviewers and booksellers alike, include Jean Cocteau: The Mirror and the Mask by Julie Saul and Small Rooms & Hidden Places by Ronald W. Wohlauer. Verba Mundi has so far published works by world- renowned authors Georges Perec, Jose Donoso, Isaac Babel, and Anna Seghers, and has introduced new voices such as Sylvie Germain (whose Book of Nights was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times) and the acclaimed Swedish novelist Göran Tunström, author of The Christmas Oratorio. David R. Godine, Inc., has received numerous awards, including the Carey-Thomas award for Excellence in Publishing (1976), the Boston Globe Literary Press Award (1987), the first New England Booksellers Annual Award (1989), and the Leipzig Internationalen Buchkunst-Austellung (1989). In 1984, Bookbuilders of Boston awarded Godine the W. A. Dwiggins Award for maintaining standards of excellence in book production. Additionally, on July 1, 2002, John Martin, the founder and for thirty-six years the publisher of Black Sparrow Press, closed down his shop in Santa Rosa, California. After finding new homes for four of his authors—Charles Bukowski, Paul Bowles, John Fante, and Wyndham Lewis—he entrusted the rest of his backlist to a fellow publisher, David R. Godine. The agreement was simple: Godine would keep Black Sparrow's offerings available to the trade, keep the best-selling titles in print, and keep the house's spirit alive through judicious acquisitions. In short, Black Sparrow Press would be reborn—as Black Sparrow Books at David R. Godine, Publisher. "David Godine is a remarkable publisher.... He is determined to prove that the day of elegant books has not vanished. And he does prove it. Elegantly."
— The New York Times
"Godine books are not 'beautiful' in the glossy fashion of the coffee-table books that flood the market at Christmastime. They are instead flawlessly produced examples of the arts of printing and bookbinding, exquisitely understated."
— Newsweek
"Thank God some publishers, such as David R. Godine, march to a different drummer. So long as publishers copy one another . . . the trend of the moment dominates. Initiative and courage are necessary to battle mass thinking, and Godine, a small Boston publisher, has them."
— Cincinnati Enquirer
*We reserve the right to remove any posts with profanity.
09/29/2026
Back on our shelves, a new edition of Aharon Appelfeld’s BADENHEIM 1939.
A masterpiece of world literature, set in Austria as the N***s began their rise.
It is spring 1939. And Badenheim, a resort town vaguely in the orbit of Vienna, is preparing for its summer season. The vacationers arrive as they always have, a sampling of Jewish middle-class life: the impresario Dr. Pappenheim, his musicians, and their conductor; the bubbly Frau Tsauberblit; the historian, Dr. Fussholdt, and his much younger wife; the “readers,” twins with a passion for Rilke; a child prodigy; a commercial traveler; a rabbi.
Finally, the vacationers, whose numbers have now increased by the forced crowding-in of other Jews hardly on vacation, become de facto prisoners in their familiar resort; their “vacation” begins to take on the lineaments of undefined disaster.
Author, and Holocaust survivor, Aharon Appelfeld created a world in Badenheim 1939 that has only gained power for readers since its publication in 1980. Philip Roth called Appelfeld “a displaced writer of displaced fiction who has made of displacement and disorientation a subject uniquely his own.”
Two stories from Georges Perec, THINGS and A MAN ASLEEP, available now in a new edition from Godine.
One couple consumed by things. One man liberated by indifference. Two haunting explorations of the things we own—and the things that own us.
In Things: A Story of the Sixties, Jerome and Sylvie, a young, upwardly mobile couple lust for the good life, caught between the fantasy of “the film they would have liked to live” and the reality of life’s daily mundanities.
The nameless student in A Man Asleep attempts to purify himself entirely of material desires and ambition. He longs “to want nothing. Just to wait, until there is nothing left to wait for. Just to wander, and to sleep.” Yearning to exist on neutral ground as “a blessed parenthesis,” he discovers something unexpected.
09/01/2026
Happy pub day Anthony Walton and CELESTIAL MECHANICS!
A journey through heaven and earth for the questing mind. Navigating from the clockwork music of the spheres to the “melismatic celebration of disaster” that is the blues, these are poems that map the places where orderly cosmic harmony and dissonance converge.
09/01/2026
Happy pub day to Peter Ralston and GOING DEEP!
A master storyteller’s intimate visual portrait of Maine, on land and sea—opening the door to a world few outsiders ever see.
Going Deep is far more than “just” a photography book; it transcends mere regionalism as a visual memoir of a life spent in a world of working waterfronts, the "lifeboat ethics" of small, working villages, and the enduring spirit of a place that offers profound lessons of community and caring, lessons that seem particularly stirring and applicable today.
09/01/2026
Simon Van Booy’s SIPSWORTH is now available in paperback!
Sometimes a second chance comes in the most unexpected way....
Following the loss of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns to the village of her childhood after living abroad for six decades. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss. She retreats into her home on Westminster Crescent, becoming a creature of routine and habit: “Each day was an impersonation of the one before with only a slight shuffle—as though even for death there is a queue.”
Then, one cold winter night, a chance encounter with a mouse sets Helen on a surprising journey. Over the course of two weeks in a small English town, this reclusive widow discovers an unexpected reason to live.
Sipsworth is a reminder that there is always reason for hope. No matter what we have planned for ourselves, sometimes life has plans of its own. With profound compassion, Simon Van Booy illuminates not only a deep friendship forged between two lonely creatures, but the reverberations of goodness that ripple out from that unique bond.
08/31/2026
Join Tom Gilbert, author of DEATH IN THE STRIKE ZONE for a guided trolley tour of baseball greats at Green Wood Cemetery on September 26th,10:00am!
Find more details and purchase tickets here: https://www.green-wood.com/event/field-of-legends-baseball-greats-of-green-wood-trolley-tour/
08/28/2026
08/25/2026
Happy pub day to Ward Farnsworth, Sarah van der Pas, and THE LATIN TAMER!
Learn to read the Romans! This book is an exciting new way to discover the Latin language. Whether you want to master it or just see enough to enjoy some time travel, The Latin Tamer makes the journey a pleasure.
Find more information and order your copy today at godine.com
08/21/2026
“A compendium of hope that reaffirms the inter-connectedness of life that eventually brings us whole and brings us home.” —Terrain
Find a link to the full review in our bio and order your copy of LIFELINES today at godine.com!
08/11/2026
Happy pub day to Sarah O’Connor and WE ARE NOT MACHINES!
In this deeply reported investigation, award-winning Financial Times journalist Sarah O’Connor exposes how AI and robotics are reshaping the modern workplace. Traveling from Amazon warehouses and long-haul trucking routes to Orwellian corporate offices using AI hiring algorithms, O’Connor documents a disturbing reality: workers aren't being liberated by machines—they are being paced, monitored, and crunched by them.
Find more info and order your copy today at godine.com!
07/28/2026
There’s still time to register for Sarah O’Connor’s virtual event tomorrow! Find more details and RSVP here: https://events.georgetown.edu/event/40650-we-are-not-machines-the-fight-for-the-future-of
Click here to claim your Sponsored Listing.
Category
Telephone
Website
Address
Boston, MA
02108
Opening Hours
| Monday | 9am - 5pm |
| Tuesday | 9am - 5pm |
| Wednesday | 9am - 5pm |
| Thursday | 9am - 5pm |
| Friday | 9am - 5pm |
Alerts
Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Godine posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.