Background

George Horace Lorimer was born on October 6, 1868, in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. He was the son of Reverend Doctor George C. and Belle (Burford) Lorimer.

George Claude was entrenched in his career as a Baptist preacher. As his popularity as a minister grew, George moved his family around the United States, finally settling in Chicago.

Education

Lorimer attended Moseley High School in Chicago, Colby College, and Yale University. Lorimer entered Yale in 1888 and left at the end of the first year, determined to become a wealthy businessman.

Career

Lorimer began working for Philip D. Armour, a very successful meat packer, in Armour’s company. After two years as a mail clerk, Lorimer was promoted to assistant manager of the canning department, a position requiring that he travel all over the country. He remained with Armour’s company until 1895, when he left to begin working in the wholesale grocery business. The career move was disastrous and Lorimer turned to the newspaper world for the practical experience and training it offered. He worked for the Boston Standard for a short time. During this time he wrote his first novel, The Search for Simpkins. The novel was never published in its original form, but Lorimer often excerpted from it later in his career while working at the Saturday Evening Post.

Having discovered his passion for writing, Lorimer began reporting for newspapers in Boston, first the Boston Post, then the Boston Herald. In 1898, when Lorimer read a wire story stating that the Ladies Home Journal publisher, Cyrus H. K. Curtis, had purchased the Saturday Evening Post, he contacted Curtis for a job. A few weeks later he relocated to Philadelphia, leaving his wife and young daughter in Boston, to work as literary editor for the Post. When Curtis fired the editor and left for Europe to find a replacement, Lorimer temporarily took over as managing editor, though he had been with the Post for less than a year. On his return, Curtis was so impressed by Lorimer’s work that he made Lorimer editor-in-chief.

Lorimer tackled his new position enthusiastically. He transformed the journalistic tone of the weekly newspaper by including major literary writers of the time such as Stephen Crane and Bret Harte, so that editorially the Post resembled a magazine. Circulation of the magazine rose astronomically and its popularity began to attract writers from across America. Initially, Lorimer sought content that would appeal to American businessmen, then broadened the scope to appeal to women as well, primarily the wives of the businessmen he targeted. Lorimer supposedly read each submission and established policies that would attract even the best writers: he promised a three-day turnaround on submissions and payment upon acceptance, not publication, of a story.

Lorimer wrote his own share of articles for the Post in 1901 and 1902, which he collected in his first published book, Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son (1903). The witty, fictional essays about business and life, in general, became an instant best-seller and was also published in England, Germany, and several other countries. The next year Lorimer wrote and published a sequel, Old Gorgon Graham: More Letters of a Self-Made Merchant to His Son, basing the “Old Gorgon Graham” character on his former boss P. D. Armour. Two other books followed in the next few years. The False Gods (1906) chronicled the experiences of a reporter, Simpkins, as he explored the mysteries of Egypt.

In 1932, Lorimer became president of Curtis Publishing Company, which published the Post, abandoning the position two years later to become chairman of the board. Throughout that time, he still served as an editor. Though he was considered the editor who interpreted middle-class sensibilities to Americans in one of the country’s most successful and significant magazines, who brought America to Americans, Lorimer began to lose touch in the early 1930s with the country’s mood. He retired from the Post in 1936, just after Roosevelt’s re-election.

Lorimer died on October 22, 1937, from throat cancer, most likely due to his two-pack-a-day cigarette habit.

Achievements

• George Horace Lorimer edited the Saturday Evening Post from 1899 to 1936. By combining his sense of business acumen with his ability to tap into middle-class values and interests, the magazine became one of the most widely read periodicals of the time. Circulation of the Post rose from 1800 to over a million in 1908 and reached almost three million by the 1920s.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son

    (George Horace Lorimer's satirical Letters from a Self-Mad...)

    1902
  • Old Gorgon Graham More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son 1904
  • The False Gods 1906
  • Jack Spurlock, Prodigal 1908

Politics

Lorimer vehemently opposed the popular New Deal proposed by presidential candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt and took advantage of every opportunity to use the Post as his own political platform to expose faults in Roosevelt’s renewal program.

Membership

Lorimer was a member of the Committee on Conservation and Administration of Public Domain.

Personality

In the periods of time not occupied with editing or with his own writing, Lorimer enjoyed his other passions, the outdoors and collecting antiques. He owned an eleven-acre farm he visited as frequently as his schedule allowed, was instrumental in the planting of almost a million trees in and around Philadelphia, and visited the national parks whenever possible. In collecting, he focused mainly on tapestries, British porcelain, and especially antique glass. Upon his death, the more choice pieces of Lorimer’s American glass collection were placed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Interests

• the outdoors, collecting antiques

Connections

In 1892, Lorimer married Alma Viola Ennis. The couple had two children.

Father:

George C. Lorimer

Mother:

Belle (Burford) Lorimer

Spouse:

Alma Viola Ennis

References

• A Short History Of The Saturday Evening Post
  1936
• DLB 91: American Magazine Journalists, 1900-1960, First Series By the beginning of the 20th-century, mass production had converted the economics of the nation from scarcity to abundance. National advertising gained importance, and the only available medium was the magazine-not the old-style literary magazine, but a new manifestation. Publishers came to see subscribers less as readers and more as consumers as magazines grew to become a part of the marketing process.
  1990