Harold Ross
Harold Wallace Ross (November 6, 1892 - December 6, 1951) was an American journalist and co-founder of The New Yorker magazine, which he edited from 1925 to his death.
Born in Aspen, Colorado to George and Ida (Martin) Ross, the young Ross had journalism in the blood, dropping out of school at thirteen to work for seven different papers by the time he was twenty-five: the Salt Lake City, Utah Tribune; the Marysville, California Appeal; the Sacramento Union; the Panama Star and Herald; the New Orleans Item; the Atlanta Journal, and the San Francisco Call. In World War I, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Eighteenth Engineers Railway Regiment. In France, he edited the regimental journal and went to Paris to work for the Stars and Stripes, serving from February 1918 to April 1919. On the Stars and Stripes, he met Alexander Woollcott, Franklin Pierce Adams, and Jane Grant, who would become the first Mrs. Ross.
After the war, he returned to New York City and assumed the editorship of a magazine for veterans, The Home Sector. It folded in 1920 and was absorbed by the American Legion Weekly. He then spent a few weeks at Judge, a humorous magazine. These magazines were where Ross planned a new journal, one with metropolitan sensibilities and a sophisticated tone. This would be The New Yorker, the first issue of which was dated February 21, 1925. It was a partnership between Ross and yeast heir Raoul Fleishmann; they established the F-R Publishing Company to publish the magazine.
Ross, who was said to resemble "a dishonest Abe Lincoln" was a genius at attracting talent to his new magazine, writers such as James Thurber, E.B. White, Katherine Angell, S.J. Perelman, Janet Flanner (aka "Genet"), Woolcott Gibbs, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker. Ross worked extremely long hours and ruined all three of his marriages as a result. He was a careful and conscientious editor who strived to keep his magazine clear and concise. One famous query to his writers was "Who that?" because Ross believed the only two people everyone in the English-speaking word was familiar with were Harry Houdini and Sherlock Holmes. Very aware of his limited education, his bible was Fowler's Modern English Usage. He edited every issue of the magazine from the first until his death--a total of 1,399 issues. He would be succeeded as editor by William Shawn.
He died in New York, New York during an operation to remove cancer.
He kept up a volumnious correspondence, which is available to researchers at the New York Public Library.
Bibliography
- Thomas Kunkel. Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of the New Yorker. 1995.
- James Thurber. The Years With Ross. Boston: Little, Brown, 1959.
- Ben Yagoda. About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made. New York: Scribners, 2000.
