Clarence Wilbur Taber

Clarence Wilbur Taber (1870–1967) was an American businessman best known for publishing Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary with the F. A. Davis Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Clarence Taber was born in Jersey City, New Jersey. In 1884, he moved with his mother and stepfather to the prairies near Pierre in the Dakota Territory. Taber left home at the age of 17. He worked as a farm hand, then found a job as a stableman and janitor for a local banker. Taber eventually became a teller, cashier, and loan officer at his employer’s bank.

Taber joined a militia in the northern Dakota Territory during the Indian resistance of September 1890. The uprising in the north ended with the death of Sitting Bull, who was shot and killed by an Indian policeman. The Indian resistance in the south ended with the Battle of Wounded Knee.

Clarence Taber moved to Minneapolis and began his business career with the “Anatomical and Physiological Chart of the Human Body,” which he published in partnership with I. J. Eales.

Taber then went to Chicago and worked for Montgomery Ward, edited a monthly magazine called The National Progress, and then served as the literary editor of the Chicago Daily News. In 1905, he published a Dictionary for Nurses which he sold through mail order with help from his family.

Next, Clarence Taber was hired to be an educational sales representative by the G & C Merriam Company. In 1916, he became the editor and manager of the J. B. Lippincott Company’s school-book department in Chicago. Taber worked for Lippincott until 1929.

Clarence Taber was hired as a full-time nursing textbook editor by the F. A. Davis Company in 1931. His most important contribution to the firm was Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, a book that enjoyed instant success on its publication and which remains a mainstay of the F. A. Davis Company’s publication list today. Clarence Taber also published 30 nursing textbooks that influenced nursing education for a generation.

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