Barney Rosset died at age 89 after having heart surgery on February 21, 2012. He was the renegade publisher of Grove Press who first brought Samuel Beckett’s work to the United States, and who published D.H. Lawrence’s racy Lady Chatterly’s Lover and Henry Miller’s even more controversial Tropic of Cancer. When Rosset’s books faced nationwide bans, he fought and won, literally, hundreds of court cases (some reaching as high as the Supreme Court) for First Amendment rights. His work at Grove Press brought exposure to figures like Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh. He also published The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as well as numerous eventual Nobel Prize winners, including Beckett, Harold Pinter, and Kenzaburo Oe.

In 1957, Rosset founded the Evergreen Review, which began as a quarterly but eventually became a monthly literary magazine, iconic for its support of countercultural artists. Its first two issues featured work by Beckett and the long poem, “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg. Rosset edited the magazine through 1973.

Rosset will be remembered for his defense and support of free speech for artists. In 2008, the National Book Foundation declared him, “a tenacious champion for writers who were struggling to be read in America.”

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/arts/barney-rosset-grove-press-publisher-dies-at-89.html?pagewanted=1

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/people/article/50745-remembering-barney-rosset-legendary-publisher.html

Photo Credit: National Book Foundation / Rosset Archives