Joshua Ballinger Lippincott, the only child of Jacob and Sarah (Ballinger) Lippincott, was born on March 18, 1813 in Juliustown, Burlington County, New Jersey, United States. He was descended from Richard Lippincott who moved from New England to Shrewsbury, New Jersey about 1665.
Lippincott received a common-school education.
Lippincott went to Philadelphia between 1827 and 1830 and entered the employ of Clarke, the bookseller. He applied himself to this business and mastered its details sufficiently so that when his employer became financially embarrassed and the stock was purchased by creditors, he was continued in sole charge of the business although he was but eighteen years of age. He remained in this position until 1836 when he began business on his own account at Clarke's old location under the name of J. B. Lippincott & Company.
At first he published principally Bibles and prayer books, then religious works. He was ambitious to place himself at the head of the Philadelphia book trade, and with this end in view, in 1849 he bought the firm of Grigg, Elliot, & Company, which was then the largest and most prosperous publishing house in the city. His firm was reorganized, January 1, 1850, and became Lippincott, Grambo & Company. In 1851, while on a trip to Europe, he laid the foundations for the extensive book-importing business in which his firm later engaged.
On June 30, 1855, with the retirement of Grambo, the firm resumed the name J. B. Lippincott & Company and Lippincott became the acknowledged head of the publishing business in Philadelphia. In 1865 he again visited Europe and entered into business relations with nearly all the leading publishing houses in London. His foreign business increased and in 1876 he established a London agency. In 1855 Lippincott published the first edition of Lippincott's Pronouncing Gazetteer, under the editorship of Joseph Thomas and Thomas Baldwin, which was accepted as a standard reference and went through several editions. In the sixties he took over the publication of Prescott's histories. In 1870, having delegated Thomas to head a companion work to the Gazetteer, he published in two volumes the Universal Pronouncing Dictionary of Biography and Mythology. In 1870 and 1871 he published the second and third volumes of Samuel Austin Allibone's Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors. He also published successive editions of the Dispensatory of the United States, some of Bulwer's novels, Worcester's dictionaries, and numerous other works of reference. Not confining himself to the printing of books, he put out the North American Medico-Chirurgical Review, edited by Samuel D. Gross, which was suspended after the outbreak of the Civil War, established Lippincott's Magazine in 1868, and in 1870 began the publication of the Medical Times.
In 1854 he was elected a director of the Farmers' & Mechanics' Bank of Philadelphia, in 1861 a member of the board of managers of the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, and in 1862 a director of the Pennsylvania Company for Insurance on Lives and Granting Annuities. In 1874 he was chosen a member of the board of trustees of Jefferson Medical College, and in 1876 he was elected to the board of trustees of the University of Pennsylvania. Besides these positions, most of which he held until his death, he was for many years a member of the board of directors of the Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Company. He was a lover of animals and for some time was president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. He was also a generous donor to the department of veterinary medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, of which he was regarded as one of the founders. In February 1885 he incorporated his firm as the J. B. Lippincott Publishing Company and retired from business because of ill health. He died in Philadelphia, leaving an estate valued at several million dollars.
Lippincott married Josephine Craige on October 16, 1845, and they had four children.
