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Established in 1972, Hackett Publishing Company is a privately held, staunchly independent publisher. HPC’s personnel, its books and the character of its practices all manifest a stability and continuity rare in today’s publishing world.

It was when the ultimate conglomerate of its day, ITT, bought Bobbs-Merrill, curtailing re-investment in its publishing program in order to extract its juice, that Bill Hackett left the College Division he'd founded at Bobbs to begin anew as an independent publisher with his wife

Frances. Their intention was to create a firm that would remain small and provide a service to the humanities.

Their publishing efforts began with G.M.A. Grube’s outstanding translation of Plato’s Republic. HPC’s first books exemplified in several ways the character of the publishing program to which Bill and Frances aspired. All were in philosophy, a discipline badly underserved by publishers at the time. Importantly, HPC’s editorial development practices were modeled on a partnership between author and publisher rather than a relationship between supplier and manufacturer, and the prices of its books were stunningly modest.
HPC’s list has expanded steadily over the years to include state-of-the-art translations, editions, and original works by eminent scholars—with publishing programs in philosophy, political theory, classics, history, literature, Latin American studies, and Asian thought. 

In 2010, HPC’s shareholders created an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, putting the company on track to employee ownership, and thus committing it to a future of independence under the leadership of those who have been the stewards of its standards, practices and character.

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