Background
Grosset was born on January 17, 1870, in Windsor Mills, Quebec. He was the third of six children and the first son of Alexander Shaw and Janet (Finlay) Grosset, who had emigrated to Canada from Scotland in the late eighteen sixties.
Grosset was born on January 17, 1870, in Windsor Mills, Quebec. He was the third of six children and the first son of Alexander Shaw and Janet (Finlay) Grosset, who had emigrated to Canada from Scotland in the late eighteen sixties.
After two years in a preparatory school in Richmond, Quebec, Grosset attended a college in Arthabaska.
Grosset entered business as a bookkeeper in his father's paper-mill in Richelieu, but when the mill was sold in 1890 he went to New York City, where he found employment with John W. Lovell's United States Book Company, distributors of low-priced editions of popular books by standard authors. To this firm as a salesman in 1891 came George T. Dunlap, with whose name Grosset's was thereafter to be linked. Until 1898 both remained with Lovell in a succession of ill-fated publishing houses conducted under different names. In September of that year the stock and assets of the latest of these, the American Publisher's Corporation, were offered for sale at a low price, and pooling their resources Grosset and Dunlap purchased the books, secured further credit to add other salable merchandise from friendly publishers, and founded their own company. In January 1899 Dunlap joined the sales staff of Rand, McNally & Company of Chicago, but within four months he was back to engage in further ventures with Grosset. The firm of Alex Grosset & Company was founded in 1899, but at the beginning of 1900 the name was changed to Grosset & Dunlap. Grosset was president until his death. Early successes of the young publishing firm were with Kipling's Barrack Room Ballads and two novels, Hall Caine's The Christian and James Lane Allen's The Choir Invisible. As the firm weathered the first critical years and gained stability, Grosset became the quietly efficient business manager attending to the office and executive duties, while his partner selected the books to be handled and served as salesman. In the belief that the reading public preferred clothbound to the then prevalent paper-bound editions, the partners bought up remainder lots of paperbound novels and then rebound them in cloth to sell at popular prices. A natural development was an arrangement with the original publishers for permission to reprint editions from their plates, bind them in cloth, and sell them at low prices. The first reprint, and the beginning of a new departure in the publishing business which was to result in making well-bound books available to the great low-price market, was a novel by Harold Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware. Shortly afterward, Dodd, Mead & Company permitted Grosset & Dunlap to reprint from their plates a popular-priced edition of Paul Leicester Ford's Janice Meredith. Henceforth, the manufacture and distribution of "second-run" editions printed from the plates of all the outstanding publishing houses was to be the firm's chief enterprise. In many new ways Grosset and his partner pioneered to bring good books in good bindings, yet inexpensively priced, to the rapidly expanding reading public. They added to their list a line of books for children, among them the The Rover Boys, Tom Swift, and the The Bobbsey Twins, of which millions of copies were sold. The wide fame and household reputation of many writers, Gene Stratton Porter and Zane Grey among them, may be traced to the publishing and distributing genius of Grosset & Dunlap. Of Zane Grey's novels alone, more than a million copies a year were distributed over a long period. The firm was largely responsible, also, for the discovery of new outlets for books - drugstores, department stores, and news-stands; as early as 1915 it realized the possibilities of "motion-picture editions. " Through wars and depressions it managed to keep prices adjusted to economic conditions. In 1929, when general financial conditions seriously affected the business, Grosset enlarged it to include reference books, dictionaries, and books on self-help. The strain of dealing with the problems involved bore heavily on him, Dunlap having withdrawn from active participation. In 1915 Grosset moved from New Jersey to Riverside, Connecticut, where he maintained an estate, "Thrushwood. " He helped found in 1920 the National Association of Book Publishers, in which organization he served continuously as director or officer. In 1933 he was one of a committee to phrase the publishers' code in compliance with the National Industrial Recovery Act. To many authors and younger publishers he gave counsel freely, and on many occasions steered them toward valuable publishing properties. His business was governed by principle rather than by the dictates of momentary expediency. In his day no publisher was more universally liked or trusted. His death, occasioned by a heart ailment, occurred in Riverside, on October 27, 1934.
President of the Grosset & Dunlap (1898-1934)
A tall, spare, ruddy-faced Scotsman, Grosset was modest and reticent, though easy of approach; he seldom discussed, even with intimate friends, his important contribution to American book-publishing.
Grosset was twice married: first, February 27, 1893, in Orange, New Jersey, to Alice Carey, by whom he had a son, Alexander Donald; second, June 17, 1915, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Frances Sparks Hood, by whom he had three daughters, Alexandra, Janet, and Barbara.