Background
Joseph was born on August 10, 1845 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, where his father was a dry-goods merchant. He was the son of Joseph M. and Elizabeth (Fahnestock) Stoddart.
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book
The New science review Volume 1, no. 2 ; A miscellany of modern thought and discovery
(This historic book may have numerous typos and missing te...)
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1894 Excerpt: ...state behind them, until our age. But what is religious science? Tolstoi answers that " it is the sum of all human information as to what relates to the destiny of man, and to the true welfare of each man and of all men." He continues: "There are innumerable quantities of subjects to which science may be applied; but the one science that determines the importance of other sciences, is the knowledge of what constitutes the welfare and destiny of all men. Without this knowledge, all other arts and sciences become a pernicious amusement, and to this subject true science has always given, and must always give, the first place. "Mankind has been living long, and men have never been without a science relative to their welfare. To a superficial observation, this science appears to be different with Buddhists, Brahmins, Hebrews, Christians, the followers of Confucius, and those of Laotse; though one need only to reflect on these various teachings in order to see their essential unity; and now of a sudden it turns out that modern 'men of science' have decided that this very science, which has been until now the guide of all human information, is in the way of everything; and this denial of knowledge they call science! "All that has been done in this direction from the beginning of the world by the greatest intellects of mankind are trifles, and no longer have weight. According to this teaching you are a cell of an organism, and the problem of your reasonable activity consists in trying to ascertain your functional activity. In order to ascertain this, you must make observations outside yourself, and you must believe everything that people with the diploma of infallibility tell you. "Looking back, we see that during thousands of years, f...
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Joseph Marshall Stoddart
Edit ProfileEducation
After a period in the public schools of his native city, he was sent to the Port Royal Academy, Frankford, also in Philadelphia.
Career
At the age of sixteen he was placed with the publishing firm of J. B. Lippincott & Company, Philadelphia, and remained there thirteen years, though in the last year of the Civil War he served two enlistments of three months each. In 1874 he left to become a publisher on his own account.
Stoddart is credited with "discovering" Clark; certainly he induced that author to continue with other laughable volumes, of which Elbow Room (1876) is best remembered. The first illustrations made by Arthur Burdett Frost appeared in Out of the Hurly Burly.
Learning that a new edition of The Encyclopedia Britannica (the ninth) was on the eve of publication, he made an arrangement by which he received advance sheets that permitted him to begin reprinting the great work of reference in America simultaneously with its reprinting in Great Britain. This was continued from 1875 until the twenty-five volumes were completed in 1884.
In the meantime he began the publication of Stoddart's Encyclopedia Americana (4 vols. , 1883 - 89), a "companion" to the Britannica, written by American contributors and treating for the first time those American subjects neglected by the Edinburgh publication.
When in 1878 Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera, H. M. S. Pinafore, became a great success, he saw the value of publishing in the United States the words and scores of that and future productions by the gifted pair. It was through his influence that the world premiere of The Pirates of Penzance took place in New York City on December 31, 1879. The next year's opera was Patience. Through Stoddart's appreciation of novelty and publicity, Oscar Wilde, representative of the esthetic movement satirized in the opera, was brought to the United States to lecture in the cities where the opera was sung.
Stoddart gave personal attention to Wilde's tour and published for him his reprint of Rennell Rodd's poems, under the title supplied by Wilde, Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf (1882), with an introduction and dedication by Wilde. It was the most sumptuous and artistically produced volume, as well as the daintiest, that had been produced in the United States up to that time.
In 1877-79 he brought out a new three-volume edition of John Fanning Watson's Annals of Philadelphia, enlarged by Willis Pope Hazard. From 1880 to 1882 he issued Stoddart's Review, but in the latter year it was sold and consolidated with the American (Philadelphia).
About 1889 or 1890 he returned to the J. B. Lippincott Company to take over the management of Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, which immediately responded to his magic touch, improving in attractiveness and increasing in circulation. Amelie Rives's The Quick or the Dead? , her first novel, written at Stoddart's suggestion, appeared in that magazine, as did Rudyard Kipling's The Light That Failed, Conan Doyle's "The Sign of the Four, " which resulted in the whole series of Sherlock Holmes stories, and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Subsequently he went to Collier's and became the editor of Collier's Weekly and others.
Failing health in 1903 caused him to return to his home at Elkins Park, just outside of Philadelphia, where he died in 1921.
Achievements
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Joseph Marshall Stoddart was famous as the publisher of Out of the Hurly Burly, the first book of the humorist, Charles Heber Clark, which became instantly popular and was a remarkable financial success. Stoddart was also the first to encourage Sir Gilbert Parker. He was also the editor of Collier's Weekly, the New Science Review, the Literary Era.
Works
book
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The New science review Volume 1, no. 2 ; A miscellany of modern thought and discovery
(This historic book may have numerous typos and missing te...)
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The New science review Volume 1, no. 2 ; A miscellany of modern thought and discovery
Personality
Stoddart was both keen and enterprising.
Connections
He married in 1869 Isabella Herkness (d. 1900), daughter of Alfred Morris Herkness. He was survived by four children.
