Cliffsnotes Wikipedia

Leo Migdal

-Nov 17, 2025, 6:40 AM

CliffsNotes are a series of student study guides. The guides present and create literary and other works in pamphlet form or online. Detractors of the study guides claim they let students bypass reading the assigned literature. The company claims to promote the reading of the original work and does not view the study guides as a substitute for that reading.[1] CliffsNotes was started by Nebraska native Clifton Hillegass in 1958.[2] He was working at Nebraska Book Company of Lincoln, Nebraska, when he met Jack Cole, the co-owner of Coles, a Toronto book business. Coles published a series of Canadian study guides called Coles Notes, and sold Hillegass the U.S.

rights to the guides.[3] Hillegass and his wife, Catherine, started the business in their basement at 511 Eastridge Drive in Lincoln, with sixteen William Shakespeare titles. In August 1958, they shipped their first batch of notes and by the end of that year had sold over 58,000 copies. Hillegass hired literature teachers to condense works of literature into concise summaries, commentaries, author biographies and character analyses. In the 1960s, as his own writers revised the summaries of Shakespearian plays, Hillegass eliminated the Cole's Notes versions.[3] By 1964, sales reached one million Notes annually.

CliffsNotes now exist for hundreds of works. The term "Cliff's Notes" has become a proprietary eponym for similar products. IDG Books purchased CliffsNotes in 1998 for $14.2 million. John Wiley & Sons acquired IDG Books (renamed Hungry Minds) in 2001. In 2011, CliffsNotes announced a joint venture with Mark Burnett, a TV producer, to create a series of 60-second video study guides of literary works.[4] In 2012, CliffsNotes was acquired by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.[1]... Lifelong book lover, Elizabeth Allen managed to get a degree in something completely unrelated that she never intends to use.

She’s a proud Connecticut native who lives in a picturesque small town with her black olive-obsessed toddler daughter, her prom date-turned-husband, and her two dim-witted cats Penny Lane and Gretchen Wieners. She spends her days trying to find a way to be paid to read while drinking copious amounts of coffee, watching episodes of Gilmore girls until the DVDs fail, waiting for her husband to... Elizabeth’s work can be found at www.blackwhitereadbooks.com, where she is currently reading and reviewing all of the books referenced in Gilmore girls. She is also the cohost of two podcasts discussing the work of Amy Sherman-Palladino (“Under the Floorboards” and “Stumbling Ballerinas”). Basically, her entire goal in life is to be a bookish Lorelai Gilmore. She clearly dreams big.

Twitter: @BWRBooks CliffsNotes (formerly Cliffs Notes, originally Cliff's Notes and often, erroneously, CliffNotes) are a series of student study guides available primarily in the United States. The guides present and explain literary and other works in pamphlet form or online. Detractors of the study guides claim they let students bypass reading the assigned literature. In contrast, the company claims to promote the reading of the original work, and does not view the study guides as a substitute to the reading. CliffsNotes was started by a Nebraska native named Cliff Hillegass in 1958.

He was working at Nebraska Book Co. of Lincoln, Nebraska, when he met Jack Cole, the co-owner of Coles, a Toronto book business. Coles was also the publisher of a series of Canadian study guides called Coles Notes. Jack Cole offered the American rights to Hillegass. Hillegass and his wife, Catherine, started the business in their basement at 511 Eastridge Drive, with sixteen William Shakespeare titles. CliffsNotes now exist on hundreds of works.

The term "Cliff's Notes" has now come into modern usage as a generic noun for similar products. IDG Books purchased CliffsNotes in 1998. John Wiley & Sons acquired IDG Books (renamed Hungry Minds) in 2001. In 2011, CliffsNotes announced a joint venture with AOL and reality TV show producer Mark Burnett to introduce a series of 60-second video study guide surveys of literary works.[1] In addition to guides for literature, the company produces several other series of guides, including: CliffsNotes are a series of student study guides.

The guides present and create literary and other works in pamphlet form or online. Detractors of the study guides claim they let students bypass reading the assigned literature. The company claims to promote the reading of the original work and does not view the study guides as a substitute for that reading.[1] CliffsNotes was started by Nebraska native Clifton Hillegass in 1958.[2] He was working at Nebraska Book Company of Lincoln, Nebraska, when he met Jack Cole, the co-owner of Coles, a Toronto book business. Coles published a series of Canadian study guides called Coles Notes, and sold Hillegass the U.S. rights to the guides.[3]

Hillegass and his wife, Catherine, started the business in their basement at 511 Eastridge Drive in Lincoln, with sixteen William Shakespeare titles. In August 1958, they shipped their first batch of notes and by the end of that year had sold over 58,000 copies. Hillegass hired literature teachers to condense works of literature into concise summaries, commentaries, author biographies and character analyses. In the 1960s, as his own writers revised the summaries of Shakespearian plays, Hillegass eliminated the Cole's Notes versions.[3] By 1964, sales reached one million Notes annually. CliffsNotes now exist for hundreds of works.

The term "Cliff's Notes" has become a proprietary eponym for similar products. IDG Books purchased CliffsNotes in 1998 for $14.2 million. John Wiley & Sons acquired IDG Books (renamed Hungry Minds) in 2001. In 2011, CliffsNotes announced a joint venture with Mark Burnett, a TV producer, to create a series of 60-second video study guides of literary works.[4] In 2012, CliffsNotes was acquired by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.[1]... Clifton K. Hillegass (18 April 1918 – 5 May 2001) was the creator and publisher of CliffsNotes.[1][2]

Clifton Hillegass was born in Rising City, Nebraska, graduated from Midland Lutheran College and then studied physics and geology for two years at the University of Nebraska. He later received four honorary degrees. CliffsNotes began in 1958 as $1 reprints of Canadian study guides for 16 plays by Shakespeare. At that time, Hillegass worked for a major distributor of college textbooks. He knew hundreds of campus bookstore managers across the country. Those close relationships gave him the first outlets for the Notes.

Sales expanded rapidly as high school students began to buy the slim yellow and black pamphlets. By the early 1970s the company had created additional study aids—exam reviews, course outlines, law school materials, and test preparation kits for the SAT, ACT, GRE, and GMAT. As the company grew, Hillegass kept its headquarters in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he died. Each year he donated 10 percent of the pre-tax profits to local charities and civic organizations (which, on his death, received half of his estate). Most employees were lifetime Lincoln residents. After he sold the company in 1999, Hillegass endowed a chair in English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

This article about an American businessperson born in the 1910s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. SparkNotes, originally part of a website called The Spark, is a company started by Harvard students Sam Yagan, Max Krohn, Chris Coyne, and Eli Bolotin in 1999 that originally provided study guides for literature,... Later on, SparkNotes expanded to provide study guides for a number of other subjects, including biology, chemistry, economics, health, math, physics, and sociology. Until 2022, when SparkNotes Plus, a paid service, released, SparkNotes did not charge users to use any of its resources. SparkNotes receives revenue from advertisements.

Barnes & Noble acquired SparkNotes.com in 2001 for approximately $3.5 million.[2] TheSpark.com was a literary website launched by four Harvard students on January 7, 1999. Most of TheSpark's users were high school and college students. To increase the site's popularity, the creators published the first six literature study guides (called "SparkNotes") on April 7, 1999.[1][3][4] In 2000, the creators sold the site to iTurf Inc. The following year, Barnes & Noble[4] purchased SparkNotes and selected fifty literature study guides to publish in print format.

When Barnes & Noble printed SparkNotes, they stopped selling their chief competitor, CliffsNotes.[5] In January 2003, SparkNotes developed a practice test service called SparkNotes Test Prep. This project was followed by the release of SparkCharts, reference sheets that summarize a topic; No Fear Shakespeare, transcriptions of Shakespeare's plays into modern language; and No Fear Literature, transcriptions of literary classics like...

Cliffsnotes Wikipedia

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