MEMORIES OF A PUBLISHER 1865-1915 (SIGNED)

New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1915. First Edition. Hardcover. Good. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1915. First edition. 9 1/4 x 6 1/4 inches: pp. xii, 492, (10). Burgundy cloth boards with gilt titles to spine and blind stamp border to front. A selection from the catalogue of G. P. Putnam's Sons 10pp, appendix on The European War (World War I), index. Photographic frontispiece portrait of the author by Vanderwyde, with tissue guard.

Inscribed in violet blue pencil at top of fly leaf "To Colonel W. D. Mann with the cordial regards of Geo. Haven Putnam Oct. 1915 (faint blind imprint of this inscription on the following page). A 1/2 x 1/2 inch triangular bump to the bottom right of the front board. Minor bumping and shelf scuffing to other corners and edges. Top edge of pages gold gilt, fore and bottom edges rough trimmed. Newspaper (still present) toning to front end papers, and faint print to rfep top left corner from a bookseller's label. A couple of dog-eared pages. Two margin markings with colored pencil- unclear whether these markings were made by Putnam or Colonel Mann. Otherwise, text is unmarked. Binding solid, firm, tight. Colonel W. D. Mann served in the 7th Michigan Cavalry in the Civil War and had been appointed to the Board of Visitors to the West Point Military Acadamy in 1899 by President McKinley. He later became a businessman and newspaper publisher.

George Haven Putnam was born in London where his father had been living since1841. In 1848 the family returned to the United States, settling at Stapleton, New York, on Staten Island. He studied at American and European Universities and traveled widely in Europe. With the outbreak of the Civil War he left university without graduating to return home to serve in the Union Army. At the war's end, Major Putnam joined his father's publishing business, "G. Putnam Broadway." On his father's death in 1872, George H. Putnam and his brothers, John Bishop and Irving, took over the business, renaming it G. P. Putnam's Sons. In 1899, he married Emily James Smith. George H. Putnam retired in 1924, formally handing over the presidency of the publishing house to Palmer C. Putnam. He died in 1930, age 85.