Harrison, Gilbert A.

Gilbert A. Harrison was born in Detroit on May 18, 1915, one of three children to Samuel and Mabel Wolfe Harrison. He earned a B.A. degree in psychology from UCLA in 1937 and went on to serve in the U.S. Army in World War II. Following the war, in 1948, Harrison became national chairman of the American Veterans Committe. In 1953, with his wife, Anne Blaine, he purchased The New Republic, where he served as publisher and editor until 1974. Harrison was the author of two books, A Timeless Affair: The Life of Anita McCormick Blaine (1979), a biography of his grandmother-in-law, and The Enthusiast: A Life of Thornton Wilder (1983), and editor of several others, including Gertrude Stein's America (1965) and The Critic as Artist (1972).

Biographical Note

Biography

Gilbert Avery Harrison (1915-2008) was an alumnus of UCLA, former editor of the California Daily Bruin, former editor and publisher of the Washington-based publication, The New Republic, author of A Timeless Affair: The Life of Anita McCormick Blaine (1979) and The Enthusiast: A Life of Thornton Wilder (1983), and editor of Gertrude Stein's America (1965) and The Critic as Artist (1972).

Born on May 18, 1915 in Detroit, Michigan, he was one of three children to Samuel and Mabel Wolfe Harrison. He studied Psychology at UCLA and served as editor of the campus newspaper, the California Daily Bruin . While working at the California Daily Bruin, he cultivated a number of friendships with faculty members, such as Professor Kate Gordon (former acting head of the Psychology department), Professor Carolyn Fisher (Psychology Department), and Provost Ernest Moore, who later married Kate Gordon. During his time at UCLA, he began corresponding with Gertrude Stein with whom he maintained in contact until her death in 1947. (His collection of Stein materials are also housed at UCLA and can be seen in Collection 2108.) Harrison graduated with his B.A. in 1937.

After graduating, Harrison joined the University Religious Conference, which promoted inter-religious tolerance. In 1941, he met Eleanor Roosevelt who enlisted him as chairman of the youth division of the Office of Civilian Defense in Washington. After a year in Washington, he joined the Army during World War Two.

After the war, he joined the American Veterans Committee and became national chairman in 1948. On a fundraising mission for his organization in 1950, he traveled to Chicago to meet with the descendants of Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the horse-drawn reaper and founder of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. During this trip, he met Anne Blaine, the great-great-granddaughter of McCormick, whom he married a year later. In 1953, the couple bought The New Republic, an intellectual and liberal political journal that was initially founded in 1914 as part of Woodrow Wilson's world peace initiative.

In 1963, Harrison received a George Polk award for his revitalization of The New Republic . Under his aegis from 1953 through 1974, The New Republic was an influential publication and a strong supporter of the civil rights movement. Although it initially supported the Vietnam War, it later became a staunch opponent of it and repeatedly criticized the policies of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. The New Republic featured the work of prominent journalists such as Walter Pincus, Stanley Karnow, John Osborne, Richard Strout, Doris Grumbach, Stanley Kauffman and James Ridgeway. At its peak under Harrison, the publication's circulation reached 100,000. In 1974, he sold The New Republic to Martin Peretz, a lecturer at Harvard. During the same year, he sold Liveright Publishing which he had acquired in 1969.

Harrison and his wife Anne had two sons, David and Joel, and a daughter Eleanor. In 1977, Mrs. Anne Harrison passed away. In 1979 and 1983, Harrison published her biography as well as that of her grandmother, respectively.

On January 3, 2008, Harrison passed away of congestive heart failure in Arizona at the age of 92.

Biography

Gilbert Harrison, UCLA alumnus and former editor-in-chief of The new republic magazine, began corresponding with Gertrude Stein in 1933, and met her at a lecture in Pasadena, California, in 1934; Harrison visited Stein and Alice B. Toklas at their home in France in 1937, when Stein presented him with the typescript of The autobiography of Alice B. Toklas ; Harrison continued to correspond with Stein until her death in 1946, and maintained a friendship with Toklas until her death in 1967.