Ross, Harold W.

Ross, Harold W.

▪ American editor
in full  Harold Wallace Ross 
born November 6, 1892, Aspen, Colorado, U.S.
died December 6, 1951, Boston, Massachusetts

      editor who founded and developed The New Yorker (New Yorker, The), a weekly magazine that from its birth in 1925 influenced American humour, fiction, and reportage.

      Ross was somewhat elliptical about his past. When asked by an editor of the Saturday Evening Post for a biography, he wrote a seven-sentence letter that began “I was born in Aspen, Colorado” and ended “I knew this subject would come up sometime.” As a boy, he helped his father, who worked at several trades in the mining town of Aspen. With such chores as delivering beer to Aspen's saloons and groceries to its red-light district, Harold saw a side of life that appealed to him in its surface easiness and disregard of the high-flown. In his later correspondence one can find such sentences as “I can't give your love to Tony [owner of a New York speakeasy] at the moment because he got raided last night.” Ross quit high school to become a tramp reporter, and by the time he was 20 he had done serious newspaper work in San Francisco, Panama, New Orleans, and Atlanta, among other places. When the United States entered World War I, he enlisted and was sent to France. There he soon became the editor of Stars and Stripes, the U.S. serviceman's newspaper.

      With the financial backing of Raoul Fleischmann, a wealthy friend with whom he often played poker, Ross launched The New Yorker in 1925, and the magazine soon began to capture established writers away from the better-known magazine Vanity Fair. Ross attracted talented young new writers and artists, who were drawn to the magazine by its innovative style and lucid sentences (Ross sometimes read H.W. Fowler's Modern English Usage for pleasure). In Ross's The New Yorker, the unknown writer was on equal footing with the established one; the editor sought good writing, not great names. Such writers as E.B. White (White, E.B.) and James Thurber (Thurber, James) established their reputations as regular contributors to the magazine, as did the cartoonists Helen Hokinson (Hokinson, Helen), Peter Arno (Arno, Peter), and Charles Addams (Addams, Charles). Among innumerable other contributors to The New Yorker during Ross's years were Dorothy Parker, H.L. Mencken, John Cheever, Rebecca West, and Vladimir Nabokov. Ross remained the guiding force behind the The New Yorker for 25 years, though he had relinquished many of his duties as editor to William Shawn before his death from cancer in 1951. Letters from the Editor: The New Yorker's Harold Ross (2000) is a selection of Ross's cogent and often witty correspondence with friends, writers, and the magazine staff.

      E.B. White's biography of Ross appeared in the 14th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (see the Britannica Classic: Harold Ross).

Additional Reading
James Thurber, The Years with Ross (1959, reprinted 1984); and Thomas Kunkel, Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of The New Yorker (1995).

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Universalium. 2010.

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  • Ross,Harold Wallace — Ross, Harold Wallace. 1892 1951. American publisher who founded and edited (1925 1951) the New Yorker magazine. * * * …   Universalium

  • Ross, Harold W(allace) — born Nov. 6, 1892, Aspen, Colo., U.S. died Dec. 6, 1951, Boston, Mass. U.S. editor. He worked as a reporter and editor before launching The New Yorker in 1925 with the financial backing of a wealthy friend. The new magazine soon attracted… …   Universalium

  • Ross, Harold W(allace) — (6 nov. 1892, Aspen, Colo., EE.UU.–6 dic. 1951, Boston, Mass.). Editor estadounidense. Trabajó como reportero y editor antes de fundar The New Yorker en 1925 con el apoyo financiero de un amigo adinerado. La nueva revista pronto atrajo a… …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Ross — Ross, Barrera de Ross, Dependencia de Ross, James Clark Ross, Ronald Ross, mar de * * * (as used in expressions) Perot, H(enry) Ross Ross, barrera de hielo Ross, Betsy Ross, Harold W(allace) …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Ross H. Arnett, Jr. — Ross Harold Arnett, Jr. (April 13, 1919 July 16, 1999) was an American entomologist noted for his studies of beetles, and as founder of the Coleopterist s Bulletin .Born in Medina, New York, he was a star student at Cornell University, where he… …   Wikipedia

  • Ross — /raws, ros/, n. 1. Betsy Griscom /gris keuhm/, 1752 1836, maker of the first U.S. flag. 2. Harold Wallace, 1892 1951, U.S. publisher and editor. 3. Sir James Clark, 1800 62, English navigator: explorer of the Arctic and the Antarctic. 4. his… …   Universalium

  • Harold — /har euhld/, n. a male given name. * * * (as used in expressions) Alexander Harold Rupert Leofric George Alexander 1st Earl Arlen Harold Barton Sir Derek Harold Richard Bloom Harold Clurman Harold Edgar Crane Harold Hart James Harold Doolittle… …   Universalium

  • Harold — (as used in expressions) Alexander, Harold (Rupert Leofric George) Alexander, 1 conde Arlen, Harold Barton, Sir Derek H(arold) R(ichard) Harold George Belafonte, Jr. Bloom, Harold Clurman, Harold (Edgar) Crane, (Harold) Hart James Harold… …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • ross — /raws, ros/, n. 1. the rough exterior of bark. v.t. 2. to remove the rough exterior of bark from (a log or the like). [1570 80; orig. uncert.] * * * (as used in expressions) Perot Henry Ross Ross Ice Shelf Ross Betsy Ross Harold Wallace Ross John …   Universalium

  • Harold Ross — als Soldat im Ersten Weltkrieg, um 1918 Harold Wallace Ross (* 6. November 1892 in Aspen, Colorado; † 6. Dezember 1951 in Boston, Massachusetts) war ein US amerikanischer Journalist und Gründer der Zeitung The New Yor …   Deutsch Wikipedia

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