 In December 1959, Crowell-Collier acquired 29 percent of Macmillan Company which published fiction, non-fiction, textbooks, reference books, religious books and children's books.By August 1960, Crowell-Collier held a 52.8 percent interest in Macmillan, and on December 30, 1960, the companies merged.Macmillan was once the American division of the British Macmillan Publishers (opened in 1869) and had been run by generations of the Brett family who eventually bought the company from the British in 1896.