George Palmer Putnam (1814-1872) was arguably the most important
American publisher of the nineteenth century, a man fully and
multiply involved in developments transforming all aspects of
literary culture. In this comprehensive cultural biography, Ezra
Greenspan offers a wide-ranging account of a rich, productive life
lived in print, interrelating Putnam's life with the life of his
family (one of the most remarkable of its time), with the changing
patterns of life in New York City and the nation, and with the
institutionalization of modern print culture in nineteenth-century
America.
Putnam's roles and achievements were many: he established and
ran the publishing house of G. P. Putnam's in New York City;
published many of the leading American antebellum writers, male and
female, canonical and noncanonical (indeed, was responsible for the
first act of American canonization--of Washington Irving); was the
leading publisher of art books in his time and launched Putnam's
Monthly; led efforts resulting in the institutionalization of the
American publishing industry and was the most outspoken promoter of
American authorship; led the fight in the United States for
international copyright; was the first American publisher to open
an overseas (London) branch office; and for a decade was the
leading American agent in the international book trade.
Putnam's achievements were not limited to his professional
sphere: he was also the founding Superintendent of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, the official publisher to the New York World's Fair
of 1853, the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue in New York City
during the Civil War, and the organizer of the greatest
authors-publishers dinner ever given in nineteenth-century America.
Friend and confidant to many of the leading figures of his time, he
was not simply a centrally placed publisher but was one of the most
centrally placed people of his entire society.
This study is based on meticulous archival research into not
only Putnam's own papers but into the records of his business, the
papers of other family members, and the archives of persons with
whom Putnam had contact through business and social networks. In a
finely detailed narrative, Greenspan weaves together the story of
Putnam's life and that of the development of print culture in
nineteenth-century America to offer an ambitious, comprehensive
biography of this "representative American publisher."
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