The company is made up of over 50 different divisions and operates in 5 different areas of publishing:

education publishing including English language teaching (ELT)
academic publishing including reference
science, technological and medical publishing
fiction and non-fiction book publishing
publishing services including distribution and production

Macmillan was founded in 1843 by two Scottish brothers, Daniel and Alexander Macmillan; the company started off publishing Charles Kingsley (1855), Thomas Hughes (1859), Francis Turner Palgrave (1861), Christina Rossetti (1862), Matthew Arnold (1865) and Lewis Carroll (1865). Tennyson joined the list in 1884, Thomas Hardy in 1886 and Rudyard Kipling in 1890.

, the company’s flagship science journal, was launched in 1869 and in the same year Macmillan opened a branch office in New York. In 1899 Palgrave’s Dictionary of Political Economy, a reference work now due to appear in its third edition, was first published. 

Macmillan’s commitment to quality has always been core to company culture and the company is today involved in publishing online resources and e-books as well as printed material.

Macmillan has been quick to embrace modern methods of production and distribution, while building on its heritage and outstanding history

In the UK, Macmillan is made up of:

	Palgrave Macmillan (academic and scholarly publishing)
	Nature Publishing Group (science publishing)
	Pan Macmillan (fiction and non-fiction book publishing)
	Macmillan Education (schools and ELT publishing)
	Macmillan Distribution
	Macmillan India (publishing services)