Donald Clifford Brace

Background

Donald Clifford Brace was born o December 27, 1881, in West Winfield, New York. He was the son of Frank L. and Martha McDonald Brace.

Education

Brace acquired a knowledge of printing and publishing by working as a youth on the newspaper that his father owned and operated in West Winfield. While attending Columbia University, from which he earned the A. B. .

Career

In 1904, Brace worked on the Columbia Spectator and in the composing rooms of New York City printing plants. This experience enabled him to obtain employment with the Henry Holt publishing company after graduation. From 1904 through 1919, Brace worked in the production department at Holt and was assistant treasurer and head of the manufacturing department.

Alfred Harcourt, one of his Columbia classmates, came to work at Holt in 1904; in 1910, he became manager of the trade department. Brace and Harcourt won outstanding reputations Brace for his mastery of the technical and financial aspects of publishing and Harcourt for attracting noted writers to the firm and for expanding its range of publications.

In 1919, together with Will D. Howe, they incorporated their own firm, Harcourt, Brace and Howe. In 1921, Howe left to become education editor at Charles Scribner's Sons, and the firm became Harcourt Brace. Harcourt Brace's first publishing success was John Maynard Keynes's The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919).

Keynes, in turn, helped them acquire Lytton Strachey's best-selling Eminent Victorians and Queen Victoria. In 1920, the firm published Sinclair Lewis' Main Street and in 1921, Dorothy Canfield Fisher's The Brimming Cup.

Although these early successes were due primarily to Harcourt's friendship with Walter Lippmann, who gave him the lead on Keynes's work, and with Sinclair Lewis, Brace was also crucially involved in negotiating with important writers. According to Charles Madison, "Brace was the gentler of the two and the steadier.

It was he who made periodic trips to England. Readily accepted by the Bloomsbury Group, he eventually brought back books by E. M. Forster, Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Roger Fry, Clive Bell, and a number of others. " Brace had a close rapport with such other of the firm's authors as Louis Untermeyer, Carl Sandburg, Katherine Anne Porter, Lewis Mumford, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, William Saroyan, and Dorothy Canfield Fisher.

Brace also negotiated contracts with Dorothy Sayers and T. S. Eliot and arranged for the American publication of the International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method, edited by C. K. Ogden.

Brace served as vice-president and treasurer of the company from its founding until January 1942, when he assumed the presidency upon Harcourt's resignation. Throughout the 1930's and 1940's the firm had remarkable success, and its textbook department and juvenile division were especially profitable. Brace also participated in activities involving the commercial relations of the book publishing industry.

Illness led to his resignation from the presidency of the company in August 1948, although he served as chairman of the board until 1949.

He died in New York City.

Achievements

• Donald Brace's mastery of the manufacturing, financial, and editorial aspects led to his work in the framing of fair trade contracts for the entire book industry during the early New Deal era. His accomplishments included the acquisition of Reynal Hitchcock. In 1950, he received the Columbia University Medal for Excellence.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Some Experiences

Membership

Brace was a member of the board of directors of the United States International Book Association and the foreign trade committee of the American Book Publishers Council.

Connections

On December 27, 1906, Donald Clifford Brace married Ida B. Pollock.

Father:

Frank L. Brace

Mother:

Martha McDonald Brace

Wife:

Ida B. Pollock

References

• THE OWL AMONG COLOPHONS
• History of Book Publishing in the United States, Vol 2: The Expansion of an Industry, 1865-1919
• An adventure in textbooks, 1924-1960,
• Publishers On Publishings