In 1916 ad agency employee Horace B. Liveright (1886-1933) and his office-mate decided to go into the book publishing business. With pooled assets of $16,500, they planned to reprint modern classics by British and European authors in inexpensive editions. Calling their venture The Modern Library of the World's Greatest Books, the two entrepreneurs eventually ranged further afield, publishing works by up-and-coming writers such as William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Unfortunately, by 1930 the firm would find itself on hard times---the result of financial mismanagement and competition from other publishing houses---and Liveright was forced out. Three years later he would be dead of pneumonia.

Horace B. Liveright was born on December 10, 1886, in Osceola Mills, Pennsylvania, to Henry and Henrietta Liveright. By the time Liveright was 14 he had left school and taken a job as an office boy in Philadelphia. When he was 17 he penned the text and lyrics for a comic opera...