Barney Rosset bought tiny Grove Press in 1951, named it for the Greenwich Village street where it was located and turned it into one of the more influential publishing enterprises of its time. He championed the writings of Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Tom Stoppard, Octavio Paz, Marguerite Duras, Che Guevara and Malcolm X, among others. And he famously fought attempts to censor D. H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer.” Rosset died Tuesday in New York City. He was 89. Obits: NYT, LA Times
Noted: He more or less started over in life after selling Grove Press to Ann Getty (Gordon Getty’s wife) and British publisher George Weidenfeld in 1985. They ousted him the next year. He revived the Evergreen Review as an online journal and ran it until shortly before his death.
