(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.
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He was born on July 13, 1855 in Walpole, Massachussets, United States, the third son and sixth of nine children of Calvin Gay and Priscilla Guild (Lewis) Plimpton and a descendant of John Plimpton, who emigrated from England to Massachusetts about 1636, becoming one of the original settlers of Deerfield. Both his father and his paternal grandfather, Henry Plimpton, were manufacturers of agricultural implements at Plimptonville in the town of Walpole, near the family farm.
After completing the usual common school education of the day, Plimpton went to Phillips Exeter Academy and thence to Amherst College, graduating in 1876. He next enrolled in the Harvard Law School, but after a year decided on a business rather than a legal career.
Plimpton received honorary degrees from six colleges or universities, among them New York University, Columbia, and Amherst.
Sent to New York City by Edwin Ginn of Ginn and Heath, Boston textbook publishers, as a salesman, he established there a branch office of which he had active charge for fifty-four years. In 1881 he became a partner in the firm, which was then reconstituted as Ginn, Heath, and Company, becoming simply Ginn and Company with the withdrawal of D. C. Heath in 1884.
On the death of Ginn, in 1914, Plimpton became chairman of the partnership, a position he retained until 1931. During the period of Plimpton's association Ginn and Company expanded widely, opening a branch office in London in 1889 and later developing a thriving and active foreign market, serving Latin America, the Near East, and the Far East. In 1896 the firm organized as an affiliate enterprise the Athenaeum Press at Cambridge, Massachussets, to handle all its printing and binding. By the time of Plimpton's retirement Ginn and Company was one of the two largest textbook publishing concerns in the United States.
Concomitant with his activities as a publisher, Plimpton was active in educational work. He served on the board of trustees of Barnard College, after 1893 as treasurer. His fund-raising activities brought the college its chief financial support. At his alma mater, Amherst, he was first an alumni trustee (1890 - 95), then after 1900 trustee for life, becoming in 1907 president of the board. Other institutions which he served as trustee included Union Theological Seminary in New York City, Phillips Exeter Academy, Constantinople Woman's College, the World Peace Foundation, the World Alliance for International Fellowship through the Churches, and the Near East Relief. He also served as a director and treasurer of the Church Peace Union and as director of the Near East College Association.
Plimpton's major avocation lay in the field of book collecting. As befitted a textbook publisher, his specialty was the history of education. His collection included such outstanding items as a Carolingian codex dating from about the year 820 containing a series of theological treatises apparently compiled for the instruction of the clergy under Alcuin, Charlemagne's "minister of education, " and a number of fifteenth-century manuscripts, together with the first printed editions of Euclid's Elements and the Arithmetica of Boethius, a copy of the earliest known printed arithmetic, and an extensive collection of early American textbooks.
Plimpton himself published several scholarly studies based on his holdings, including The Education of Shakespeare (1933) and The Education of Chaucer (1935). His extensive collection of the antiquities of the French and Indian War was left to Amherst.
He died of pneumonia at his summer home in Walpole, Massachussets.
George Arthur Plimpton was one of the founders of Barnard College, of the American Academy of Political Science. Over a period of more than fifty years he carefully collected a remarkable library of manuscripts and printed books which illustrated the rise and development of the textbook and school studies from the early medieval period of the seven liberal arts to that of the modern academic curriculum. Besides, Plimpton was the author of The Education of Shakespeare and The Education of Chaucer.
(This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)
He had married, on October 2, 1892, Frances Taylor Pearsons of Holyoke, Massachussets, who died in 1900, leaving a son, Francis Taylor Pearsons Plimpton. On November 10, 1917, he married Fanny Hastings of Willoughby, Ohio, by whom he had two children, Calvin Hastings and Emily.
