John Sanburn Phillips was an American magazine editor and publisher.
Background
He was born on July 2, 1861 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, United States, the first of two sons and second of four children born to Edgar L. Phillips, a physician, and Mary Lavinia (Sanburn) Phillips. He was descended from Rev. George Phillips, an early settler of Massachusetts, through a branch of the family that had migrated to Orange County, New York, intermarried there with two Dutch families, and established woolen and flour mills in Phillipsburg on the Wallkill River.
Education
John Phillips received his early education in local schools of Galesburg and entered Knox College there. The friendship he formed there with a fellow student, Samuel S. McClure, determined his future career. He received the B. A. degree in 1882.
Seeking wider horizons, Phillips in 1883 entered Harvard College as a junior; he studied literature under Francis J. Child and gained a second B. A. (magna cum laude) in 1885. Then he went on to study phonetics and literature for a year at the University of Leipzig.
Career
After graduation he worked briefly with Samuel S. McClure editing the Wheelman (later renamed Outing), a new publication for bicycle enthusiasts.
Returning to the United States after studies in Europe in 1886, Phillips settled in New York City and became editor and manager of the newspaper syndicate that McClure had organized two years earlier. For the next twenty years the destinies of the two men were professionally linked in a relationship that was alternately humorous and pathetic, stimulating and frustrating. Phillips filled many roles for McClure. He was one of the formal organizers of the McClure Syndicate in 1893, and became vice-president, treasurer, and a partner.
In 1899 he managed Harper and Brothers during McClure's brief ownership of that publishing house, and the following year he became head of McClure, Phillips and Company, a book-publishing venture of the syndicate. Phillips, however, made his major contribution through his longtime guidance of McClure's Magazine, launched in 1893.
His papers are filled with evidence of his fine editorial touch. Constantly he checked the tendency of his writers to editorialize and reminded them that their task was to interest and energize the reader. The writers at McClure's tended to become reformers, but Phillips' caution and his editorial perspective kept him more detached, though not unsympathetic to reform. The ebullient McClure took the spotlight, and the staff writers gained renown.
When in 1906 the McClure's staff broke up over the founder's grandiose plan for starting a new magazine, a "people's" bank and life insurance company, and a model social settlement, Phillips sold McClure his substantial interests in the publishing empire. Along with Tarbell, Baker, Steffens, and others he purchased the American Illustrated Magazine and transformed it into the American Magazine. But need for stopgap financing never eased, and Phillips was forced more and more into the business end of the venture, where his talent was less developed. In 1911 the American was sold to the Crowell Publishing Company. Four years later Phillips resigned the editorship, at which time most of the remaining staff from McClure's left the magazine.
After reconsideration, Phillips agreed to stay on as a consulting editor of the American, but although he held this post until 1938, his active editorial career ended in 1915. Phillips took to semiretirement and then retirement well, dividing his time between his houses in New York City and Goshen, New York. Although troubled since 1900 with a heart condition, he conserved his strength with periods of relaxation.
He died at his home in Goshen at the age of eighty-seven.
Achievements
Religion
He was reared a Presbyterian, and although he never joined a church, he retained strong spiritual views.
Personality
Phillips looked older than his years. His large head, receding hairline, moustache, and steel-rimmed glasses gave him a serious and imposing countenance.
He was a thorough, sensitive, and steadfast editor.
Connections
On August 25, 1885, Phillips married Emma Delia West of Oneida. The union was evidently shortlived, for five years later, on October 2, 1890, he married Jennie Beale Peterson of Boston, the sister of a Knox friend. They had five children: Ruth Beale, Dorothy Sanburn, Margaret Evertson, Elizabeth Peterson, and John Peterson.