George Palmer Putnam (7 February 1814 20 December 1872) is best known for his activities as a publisher of books and periodicals, especially as founder and head of Putnam's Publishing Company. The son of Henry Putnam and Catherine Hunt Palmer, he attended his mother's school, an early coeducational venture, in Brunswick, Maine. At the age of eleven, Putnam was apprenticed to his uncle, John Gulliver, who owned a carpet shop in Boston. After four years there, he left to go alone to New York City, where he worked briefly for George W. Bleeker, a bookseller and stationer, soliciting for Bleeker's monthly, The Euterpiad: an Album of Music, Poetry and Prose. His next job was as a clerk for Jonathan Leavitt, a leading publisher of theological and religious books, who was also the partner and brother-in-law of Daniel Appleton, founder of the publishing firm of D. Appleton and Company.

During this period, borrowing...