The roots of the company date back to 1923, when William Warder Norton and his wife, Mary D. Herter Norton, began publishing lectures delivered at the People's Institute, the adult education division of New York City's Cooper Union. The Nortons soon expanded their program beyond the Institute, acquiring manuscripts by celebrated academics from America and abroad.

For years, Norton has been known for its distinguished publishing programs in both the trade and the college textbook areas. Early in its history Norton entered the fields of philosophy, music, and psychology, publishing acclaimed works by Bertrand Russell, Paul Henry Lang, and Sigmund Freud (as his principal American publisher).

In the 1940s, Norton expanded its history textbook publishing with Edward McNall Burns's Western Civilizations, now in its fifteenth edition, while the 1950s brought the addition of international figures such as the renowned authority on human development, Erik Erikson. Norton also developed a series that would change the teaching of literature: the Norton Anthologies. Collectively, these anthologies have sold over 20 million copies.

In the 1960s, the company initiated a poetry program that now includes Pulitzer Prize winners Rita Dove, Stephen Dunn, and Maxine Kumin; National Book Critics Circle Award winner B. F. Fairchild; National Book Award winners Adrienne Rich, A. R. Ammons, Gerald Stern, Stanley Kunitz, and Ai. In 2001, Norton brought the epic poem Beowulf back to public attention with Seamus Heaney’s best-selling, Whitbread Award-winning translation.

In the past few decades, the firm has published best-selling books by such authors as economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, physicist Richard Feynman, and historians Peter Gay, Jonathan Spence, Christopher Lasch, and George F. Kennan. Norton has also developed a more eclectic list, with prominent titles including Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry; Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller Guns, Germs, and Steel; Judy Rogers’s The Zuni Café Cookbook; Patrick O'Brian’s critically acclaimed naval adventures; the works of National Book Award-winning fiction author Andrea Barrett; Liar's Poker and Moneyball by Michael Lewis; Fareed Zakaria’s The Future of Freedom; and Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm.

At the same time, the college department has strengthened its offerings with leading titles in economics, psychology, political science, and sociology. Books such as American Government by Theodore J. Lowi and Benjamin Ginsberg, Hal R. Varian’s Intermediate Microeconomics, Introduction to Sociology by Anthony Giddens, Mitchell Duneier, and Richard P. Applebaum, and The Norton Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Greenblatt et al., have joined the Norton Anthologies and Norton Critical Editions, Joseph Machlis and Christine Forney’s The Enjoyment of Music, Donald J. Grout and Claude Palisca’s A History of Western Music, and other perennial best-sellers as leaders in their fields. Meanwhile, newer titles such as Inventing America by Pauline Maier et al., Michael S. Gazzaniga and Todd F. Heatherton’s Psychological Science, and Stephen Marshak’s Earth: Portrait of a Planet are garnering widespread praise and national attention on their way to becoming classroom essentials.

In 1985, Norton expanded its publishing program with Norton Professional Books, specializing in books on psychotherapy and, more recently, neuroscience. The Professional Books program has also moved into the fields of architecture and design.

In another expansion, in 1996, Norton acquired the distinguished Vermont firm The Countryman Press and added well-respected nature, history, and outdoor recreation titles to the Norton list. In 2003, Berkshire House Press joined Norton, becoming part of the Vermont operation.

In addition, the company has emerged as a prominent international player with the creation of W. W. Norton & Company Ltd. in London in 1984 and with agencies in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Latin America.

W. W. Norton & Company now publishes about 400 books annually in hardcover and paperback.