It was founded in 1897 by Frank Nelson Doubleday as Doubleday & McClure Company, who had formed a partnership with magazine publisher Samuel McClure. One of their first bestsellers was The Day's Work by Rudyard Kipling.
Doubleday was sold to Bertelsmann AG in 1986. In 1988 it became part of the Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, which in turn became a division of Random House in 1998.