Call Number:

C1505

Repository:

Princeton University Library: Manuscripts Division

Extent:

• 61 boxes
• 32.8 linear feet

Language:

English, Serbian, Russian, German, and Bosnian

Preferred Citation:

Identification of specific item; Date (if known); William Jovanovich Papers, Box and Folder Number; Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Date:

1950-1996 (bulk) and 1815-2006 (inclusive)

Creator:

Jovanovich, William.

Form:

Audiocassettes. -- 20th century, Correspondence -- 20th century, Drafts (documents). -- 20th century, Interviews. -- 20th century, and photographs -- 20th century

Abstract:

William Jovanovich (1920-2001) was an American publisher, author, and businessman, who led the publishing firm Harcourt Brace Jovanovich from 1954 to 1991, as president and later as chief executive officer. The collection consists of Jovanovich's author and publisher files, including an extensive file on Charles A. Lindbergh, along with correspondence, writings, personal and family papers, memorabilia, and other files documenting his career as a major American publisher in the 20th century, his creative pursuits in fiction and nonfiction, and his interest in Yugoslav literature and textbook publishing.

William Jovanovich (1920-2001) was an American publisher, author, and businessman, who served from 1954 to 1991 as the president of the publishing firm Harcourt Brace & Company. The firm was renamed Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1970, when Jovanovich became the chief executive officer. Born in a coal-mining camp in Louisville, Colorado, to a Polish mother and a Montenegrin father, Jovanovich learned English in elementary school, completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Colorado, and studied English and American literature at Harvard University. His graduate studies were interrupted by World War II, when he left school to serve as an officer in the U. S. Navy. After the war, Jovanovich returned briefly to his studies at Columbia University where he worked on a dissertation on Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1943, he married Martha Evelyn Davis, with whom he went on to have three children. Due to financial hardship, Jovanovich left Columbia in 1947 to join Harcourt Brace & Company as a traveling college textbook salesman. He was promoted to head of Harcourt's school division in 1953 and became president of the company the following year at age 34.

Jovanovich was an innovative figure in the publishing industry. He popularized the use of colorful illustrations in textbooks, and he is credited with starting the first imprint, now a common feature of most major publishing houses. He persuaded Helen and Kurt Wolff of Pantheon Books to join Harcourt by allowing them to publish books under their own trade name. He made unconventional business decisions for a publisher, such as relocating the publisher's headquarters from Manhattan to Orlando and purchasing Sea World marine parks. Under his direction, Harcourt became one of the largest textbook publishers, while continuing to publish a variety of internationally known authors, including Mary McCarthy, Hannah Arendt, Italo Calvino, Alice Walker, Octavio Paz, Umberto Eco, and Charles and Anne Morrow Lindburgh. Jovanovich maintained close working relationships with certain authors, including Mary McCarthy and Charles A. Lindbergh, whose posthumous autobiography Jovanovich edited. Over the course of Jovanovich's term as chairman, Harcourt transformed from a small publishing house into a diversified company with annual sales of over a billion dollars. In the late 1980s, the company took on massive debt in a successful but ultimately damaging strategy to thwart a hostile takeover by the British publisher Robert Maxwell, leading to Jovanovich's resignation as president in 1990.

Jovanovich also wrote and published a number of his own books throughout his lifetime, including the essay collection Now, Barabbas (1964), the novel The World's Last Night (1990), the memoir The Temper of the West (2003), and several others. He also maintained a lifelong dedication to promoting the works of Yugoslav authors, the value of education, and the cause of Serbian nationalism. He died in San Diego, California, in 2001 at age 81.

The papers consist of professional and personal files of the American publisher and author William Jovanovich (1920-2001), largely spanning his time as president and chief executive officer of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich from 1954 through 1991. The majority of materials consist of author and publisher files, including correspondence with Svetlana Alliluyeva, Hannah Arendt, Matija Bećković, Sylvia Beach, Arthur C. Clarke, Edward Dahlberg, Milovan Djilas, e. e. cummings, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Hiram Haydn, Helen Hayes, Irving Howe, Jerzy Kosiński, Anita Loos, Marshall McLuhan, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Lewis Mumford, V. S. Pritchett, Erich Maria Remarque, Richard Rovere, Carl Sandburg, William Saroyan, Vasilēs Vasilikos, Andy Warhol, Leonard Woolf, and other notable authors, as well as publishers including Helen Wolff and Cass Canfield. A significant author file on Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh includes correspondence with and regarding the Lindberghs, corrected typescripts and proofs, research materials and writings by potential Lindbergh biographers, photographs, and other materials related to their books with the publisher. Much of the Lindbergh materials regard Charles Lindbergh's posthumously published Autobiography of Values, which Jovanovich personally edited. Jovanovich's working files, manuscripts, and proofs for his own novels and nonfiction works are also present, as are personal and professional correspondence, family memorabilia, and files pertaining to his speeches, travels, interviews, publishing industry activities, honorary degrees and awards, and personal interests, particularly in Yugoslav authors.

The papers are arranged into the following seven series: