George Palmer Putnam

In 1829, young George Palmer Putnam (1814-1872) arrived in New York as both the city and its book trade were burgeoning. The founder of the G.P. Putnam publishing house (along with a retail firm) in 1848 was an enterprising and creative publisher whose career prefigures many aspects of publishing today. He published huge bestsellers like Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World (1850) and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Putnam's marketing acumen was particularly keen: he mined his backlist well, publishing various editions of his books (he created Putnam's Railway Library, to be sold at the newly created bookstalls in railway stations); he was one of the first to cultivate American authors--James Fenimore Cooper and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow were in his stable--and female writers (Catharine Maria Sedgwick was one of his core authors); he initiated tie-in projects, securing an agreement with the organizers of the New York World's Fair to be the official publisher of related books, which he sold at the exhibition as well as through normal channels; and he created an upscale literary journal, Putnam's Monthly (to rival the eminently successful Harper's Monthly), in 1852-53. Greenspan unfortunately dwells on the minutiae of Putnam's career, often in tedious fashion, while more exciting possibilities, such as Putnam's interactions with Melville and Poe, remain underexplored. Nor does Greenspan plumb Putnam's character adequately; he remains a gentlemanly cipher. In the end, this is less a portrait of a man than a fascinating look at the development of American publishing in one of its critical periods. (Sept.)