George Ayres Leavitt

George Ayres Leavitt (May 13, 1822 – December 18, 1888) was the son of a Massachusetts bookbinder who founded several of New York's earliest publishing firms. George Leavitt subsequently founded his own publishing company, Leavitt & Allen, but it failed during a financial panic that swept the nation during the American Civil War. Leavitt later tried to reestablish himself as both publisher and fine arts auctioneers, founding one of the first upscale auction houses, and eventually retiring from the book industry entirely.

George A. Leavitt was born in 1822, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, the son of Jonathan Leavitt, who lived in Andover, Massachusetts, where the former bookbinder's apprentice operated an early publishing firm devoted to turning out religious works connected with the Andover Theological Seminary. Shortly after his son George's birth, Jonathan Leavitt left Andover for New York City, where he launched into business with his brother-in-law Daniel Appleton, a former Boston dry goods merchant. Their partnership lasted a decade, after which Leavitt founded the publishing house of Leavitt & Trow, which published the complete works of Jonathan Edwards, and became one of the country's largest publishing houses through its dominance of religious publishing.

Helping Jonathan Leavitt build his business was his right-hand man, George Palmer Putnam, who eventually left for other better-paying opportunities. By 1842 George A. Leavitt, having graduated from Andover's Phillips Academy and worked for a time for the booksellers Robinson & Franklin, joined his father's publishing house. On his father Jonathan's death a decade later in 1851, Leavitt took over the firm and operated for year as a sole proprietorship, when he took on as partner his Andover classmate John K. Allen.

The firm renamed itself Leavitt & Allen and eventually settled at 379 Broadway in Lower Manhattan. In 1856, Leavitt took the suggestion of his father-in-law James E. Cooley, one of New York's largest auctioneers, to open a trade book sale auction house. Until that year New York publishers had dealt with wholesalers in a system devoid of rules. Wearying of the inconsistencies, the publishers, including Leavitt, founded the New York Publishers' Association in an attempt to bring order to the topsy-turvy marketplace for books. On March 20, 1856, the Second Regular Trade Sale was held on the premises of the newly formed Leavitt, Delisser & Co., an auction house formed especially to handle the trade book sale.

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