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Richard J. Walsh
Richard John Walsh (20 November 1886 – 28 May 1960) was an American publisher and literary figure best known as one of the founders and editor of John Day Company. He was the second husband of Pearl S. Buck, and publisher of her first books, including The Good Earth. He edited Asia magazine from 1933 to 1946, and, in collaboration with Buck, published a wide variety of work by Asian and progressive authors that informed the Western public about Asia.
Walsh was born and grew up in Lyons, Kansas. As an undergraduate at Harvard College he wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, along with Robert Benchley, graduating magna cum laude in 1907. He became first a reporter for the Boston Herald, and then worked as promotions manager for the Curtis Publishing Company. After World War One he worked for Herbert Hoover's United States Food Administration, then as a writer for Collier's Weekly and Women's Home Companion. In 1922, he published a small book with twenty-two page book of light verse and sketches, mostly dealing with pirates, Kidd: A Moral Opuscule. His book The Making of Buffalo Bill was written in collaboration with Milton Salsbury, the son of Buffalo Bill Cody's partner in the Wild West Show. They set out not so much to tell a story as to study of what Walsh called "the deliberate and infinitely skilful use of publicity." Pearl Buck's biographer, Peter J. Conn, remarks that the book is both "skeptical of manufactured celebrity and dazzled by the power of press agentry to manipulate public taste," which anticipated Walsh's relation with Pearl Buck: "she produced the fictional commodity; he delivered the market."
ln 1908 he married Ruby Abbott, and the couple had six children. In 1935, he divorced her and married Pearl S. Buck. He had six daughters and four sons, including Richard J. Walsh, Jr., who succeeded him as president of John Day, Janice Comfort Walsh, and Edgar S. Walsh.
In 1927, Walsh, Cleland Austin, Trell Yocum, and Guy Holt took over management of the John Day Company, named after the Elizabethan printer, John Day. The young company had little time to establish itself before the crash of 1929, but it published prestigious items such as James Branch Cabell, The Music from Behind the Moon. Walsh kept the company afloat by cutting his own salary and cashing his children's Liberty Bonds.
He took a risk when he accepted the manuscript of East Wind, West Wind, the first book by Pearl S. Buck, which had been turned down by many publishers. Walsh took the risk because he felt that Buck's second book would be better, and he made extensive suggestions to improve the manuscript. The book received mostly favorable reviews, though it did not sell especially well. The next year, John Day published Buck's The Good Earth, which became a best-seller for the next two years, saving John Day and creating a relation between Walsh and Buck. In 1935, after Walsh divorced his wife and Buck divorced her husband, the two married. The couple began a collaboration at John Day that introduced a wide range of Asian and American progressive culture, though the company relied on Buck to supply popular titles of her own.
Pearl Buck's books sold well, but the company had no other best-sellers until Margaret Landon's Anna and the King of Siam in 1944. Still, Walsh published well-regarded books on progressive education, two books by president Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as those by Sidney Hook, Frances Perkins, John Chamberlain, and Harvey O’Connor.
In 1933, Walsh arranged to become editor of Asia magazine, in which Leonard Elmhirst, the British social reformer had a controlling interest, and agreed that it should change from travel and exotic fare to political and cultural interest. Walsh published many John Day authors and many of the contributors published with John Day. Buck was a friend or colleague of Asian and American figures and authors and Walsh published their works. A sampling of these includes the United States edition of Jawaharlal Nehru's Autobiography, Eslanda Robeson.
The company's financial difficulties led Walsh to arrange for Reynal and Hitchcock to carry out the physical production and distribution, but retained the editorial function. The books that he and his editors developed were called "John Day Books". They were published under the Reynal and Hitchcock imprint until 1939, when these functions were taken over by G. P. Putnam's Sons. Just after the war ended, the company established Asia Press as a subsidiary imprint.
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Richard J. Walsh
Richard John Walsh (20 November 1886 – 28 May 1960) was an American publisher and literary figure best known as one of the founders and editor of John Day Company. He was the second husband of Pearl S. Buck, and publisher of her first books, including The Good Earth. He edited Asia magazine from 1933 to 1946, and, in collaboration with Buck, published a wide variety of work by Asian and progressive authors that informed the Western public about Asia.
Walsh was born and grew up in Lyons, Kansas. As an undergraduate at Harvard College he wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, along with Robert Benchley, graduating magna cum laude in 1907. He became first a reporter for the Boston Herald, and then worked as promotions manager for the Curtis Publishing Company. After World War One he worked for Herbert Hoover's United States Food Administration, then as a writer for Collier's Weekly and Women's Home Companion. In 1922, he published a small book with twenty-two page book of light verse and sketches, mostly dealing with pirates, Kidd: A Moral Opuscule. His book The Making of Buffalo Bill was written in collaboration with Milton Salsbury, the son of Buffalo Bill Cody's partner in the Wild West Show. They set out not so much to tell a story as to study of what Walsh called "the deliberate and infinitely skilful use of publicity." Pearl Buck's biographer, Peter J. Conn, remarks that the book is both "skeptical of manufactured celebrity and dazzled by the power of press agentry to manipulate public taste," which anticipated Walsh's relation with Pearl Buck: "she produced the fictional commodity; he delivered the market."
ln 1908 he married Ruby Abbott, and the couple had six children. In 1935, he divorced her and married Pearl S. Buck. He had six daughters and four sons, including Richard J. Walsh, Jr., who succeeded him as president of John Day, Janice Comfort Walsh, and Edgar S. Walsh.
In 1927, Walsh, Cleland Austin, Trell Yocum, and Guy Holt took over management of the John Day Company, named after the Elizabethan printer, John Day. The young company had little time to establish itself before the crash of 1929, but it published prestigious items such as James Branch Cabell, The Music from Behind the Moon. Walsh kept the company afloat by cutting his own salary and cashing his children's Liberty Bonds.
He took a risk when he accepted the manuscript of East Wind, West Wind, the first book by Pearl S. Buck, which had been turned down by many publishers. Walsh took the risk because he felt that Buck's second book would be better, and he made extensive suggestions to improve the manuscript. The book received mostly favorable reviews, though it did not sell especially well. The next year, John Day published Buck's The Good Earth, which became a best-seller for the next two years, saving John Day and creating a relation between Walsh and Buck. In 1935, after Walsh divorced his wife and Buck divorced her husband, the two married. The couple began a collaboration at John Day that introduced a wide range of Asian and American progressive culture, though the company relied on Buck to supply popular titles of her own.
Pearl Buck's books sold well, but the company had no other best-sellers until Margaret Landon's Anna and the King of Siam in 1944. Still, Walsh published well-regarded books on progressive education, two books by president Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as those by Sidney Hook, Frances Perkins, John Chamberlain, and Harvey O’Connor.
In 1933, Walsh arranged to become editor of Asia magazine, in which Leonard Elmhirst, the British social reformer had a controlling interest, and agreed that it should change from travel and exotic fare to political and cultural interest. Walsh published many John Day authors and many of the contributors published with John Day. Buck was a friend or colleague of Asian and American figures and authors and Walsh published their works. A sampling of these includes the United States edition of Jawaharlal Nehru's Autobiography, Eslanda Robeson.
The company's financial difficulties led Walsh to arrange for Reynal and Hitchcock to carry out the physical production and distribution, but retained the editorial function. The books that he and his editors developed were called "John Day Books". They were published under the Reynal and Hitchcock imprint until 1939, when these functions were taken over by G. P. Putnam's Sons. Just after the war ended, the company established Asia Press as a subsidiary imprint.