Horace Liveright

Horace Brisbin Liveright (10 December 1883 – 24 September 1933) was an American publisher and stage producer. With Albert Boni, he founded the Modern Library and Boni & Liveright publishers. He published the books of numerous influential American and British authors. Turning to theatre, he produced the successful 1927 Broadway play Dracula, with Béla Lugosi and Edward Van Sloan in the roles they would make famous in the 1931 film by the same name.

Liveright was born into a Jewish family in 1884. He initially followed the career of a bond salesman. He married Lucille Elsas, the daughter of Herman Elsas the owner of a paper company merged into International Paper of which he was subsequently an officer and director. The marriage took place in April 1911, and Liveright used his father-in-law's financial backing to embark on a publishing career.

The Liverights had two children, Herman and Lucy. Lucille divorced Liveright on grounds of misconduct in 1928, alleging "misconduct with an actress in an inn near Croton-on-Hudson."

In December 1931 he married the actress Elise Bartlett (who had appeared in Show Boat (1929 film), and had divorced actor Joseph Schildkraut in 1930); she filed for divorce four months later.

In 1917 Liveright founded the Modern Library and Boni & Liveright publishers in New York with business partner Albert Boni. Modern Library was formed as a reprinting line, publishing inexpensive books from European modernists, while Boni & Liveright published the work of contemporary Americans. Liveright published work by T. S. Eliot (The Waste Land), Charles Fort (The Book of the Damned), Theodore Dreiser (An American Tragedy), and Bertrand Russell (Marriage and Morals). The company also published the first books by Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Hart Crane, Dorothy Parker, and S. J. Perelman.

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