PUTNAM, GEORGE HAVEN (1844– 1930), dean of American publishers, at eighty-five (5929) the active head of one of the oldest publishing houses in the country, the house that gave to American literature such names as Washington Irving and Fenimore Cooper; with sixty-five years of publishing experi ence behind him, he had time to win honors as a soldier, a writer, and a man of public affairs.
This sterling American citizen, whose forefathers fought for George Washington, and who himself languished in Libby prison, upholding the Union cause, was born in England on April 2, 1844. His father, George Palmer Putnam, had founded the American publishing concern in 1837, and after that date had found it important for his publishing business to make annual trips to England. In 1841, he brought into organization the Lon don publishing house, being the first American publisher to invade England. He was a resident of England for seven years, and it was in this way that his son came to be born in London.
It was not until 1848, that young George Haven Putnam was brought to America. Among his early memories are such out
standing figures as Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, Thackeray, Louis XVII. ("Eleazar Williams"), and Lincoln.
The major's father was a member of the Committee that in vited Lincoln to New York in 1860, and the younger Putnam sat on the platform during the delivery of the Cooper Union address. After the address, he was introduced by Bryant to Lincoln.
His boyhood education was completed at Columbia grammar school, followed by studies abroad at the Sorbonne and the Uni versity of Gottingen, studies which were cut short by the begin ning of the Civil War. Mr. Putnam hastened home from Europe in 1862 to enlist in the Union Army. He was taken prisoner at Cedar Creek, and sent to Libby Prison and later to Danville.
Major Putnam's outstanding contribution to publishing history was his championship of international copyright, which resulted, in 1891, in the present copyright relations between the United States and Europe. He died in New York city on Feb. 27, 1930.