Name George Braziller | ||
 | ||
George Braziller (February 12, 1916 – March 16, 2017) was an American book publisher and the founder of George Braziller, Inc., a firm known for its literary and artistic books and its publication of foreign authors.
Life and career
Braziller became interested in publishing while he was working as a shipping clerk, his first job, during the Great Depression. In the 1940s, he founded the Book Find Club, which was smaller than the Book of the Month Club but exceedingly successful, “with a reputation for seriousness of purpose.” After the end of World War II, he sold the Book Find Club to Time–Life Publishing and put half of the proceeds into the publishing firm he founded in the mid-1950s. The Braziller publishing firm, which is also known for its loyalty to its authors, is located at 277 Broadway, Suite 708, in Manhattan, New York City. When Braziller travelled to Europe in the late 1960s, he was in Paris during the events of May 1968 which led to the collapse of the de Gaulle government. Henri Alleg's autobiography La Question, which he brought back from that trip and published in English language translation, was his firm's first big success in the United States.
While I was there, a book came out [La Question]. I got the book, took it back to America, got a hold of Richard Howard to translate it, brought the book out overnight, and we sold 10,000 copies. Just like that we became famous. Those were really exciting times in Paris. I remember you’d go to the corner café, and there were artists like Max Ernst, Giacometti, Calder, and then the writers, poets, playwrights, dramatists like Camus, Michaux, Ionesco, Dürrenmatt.... Those were the early years, when you would say “only in America” could you start a book club with only 25 bucks and move it up to 100,000 members and then start a publishing house.
