Barney Rosset (May 28, 1922 – February 21, 2012) established Grove Press, one of America’s most daring and wide-ranging publishing companies, waging censorship battles, introducing international literature, Beat writers, politically radical books, and erotica. Growing up in Chicago and attending experimental schools, Rosset read broadly, attracted especially to the small press, New Directions, where he discovered Henry Miller. After a World War II stint in the army, he married the Abstract Expressionist painter Joan Mitchell, and in 1951 bought a tiny press, which very quickly became notorious. His three censorship cases (Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Tropic of Cancer, Naked Lunch) altered the publishing landscape. Expanding book publication to a magazine, The Evergreen Review, in print from 1957 to 1984, bore the slogan “Join the Underground” and became the most progressive magazine of the era.
Barney Rosset
