Stuart, Lyle

Lyle Stuart was born Lionel Simon in New York City on August 11, 1922. After dropping out of high school he joined the Merchant Marine, later serving with the Air Transport Command of the Air Force during World War II. During the war he officially changed his name to Lyle Stuart, partially due to antisemitism he encountered in the service. After the war, he began working as a journalist, first for the International News Service in Columbus, Ohio (where he met and married Mary Louise Strawn), and later for assorted trade publications in New York City, including Ready to Wear Scout, Music Business, and Variety . He also wrote radio scripts for the State Department and published short stories and a novel.

In 1951, Stuart and his wife founded Exposé, a monthly tabloid. In its early years, Exposé published investigative articles about Franco's Spain and Jim Crow Laws, as well as fiction and essays by Norman Mailer, Ferdinand Lundberg, George Seldes, and others. In later years, Exposé (now retitled The Independent ) became more of a personal newsletter by and about Lyle Stuart. After Mary Louise's death from cancer in 1969, Stuart temporarily ceased publication, resuming on a bimonthly schedule in 1971 before finally shuttering The Independent in 1973. One of Exposé 's early articles, a 1951 takedown of columnist Walter Winchell, led to a libel suit and a $8000 award for the Stuarts. The award allowed Stuart and Mary Louise to found their first publishing company, Lyle Stuart, Incorporated.

The first book published by Lyle Stuart, Inc., was The Pulse Test (1956), a book on experimental medicine. Stuart focused on controversial and scandalous nonfiction, publishing Fidel Castro, sex manuals, conspiracy manifestos and exposés, sensationalist unauthorized biographies (including Kitty Kelley's first book), and (perhaps most famously) The Anarchist Cookbook (1971). While Stuart sold his company to the now-defunct Carol Publishing Group in 1989, he quickly resumed his career as publisher, founding Barricade Books with his second wife Carole. Barricade features similar titles, including reprinting The Anarchist Cookbook and the equally controversial The Turner Diaries (1996).

Stuart was an expansive personality, and a fierce friend and fiercer enemy - often to the same individual. He was a passionate gambler, writing two books on the subject and publishing many more, and was generous with both loans and lawsuits. He died in his home in Fort Lee, New Jersey, on June 24, 2006.

Sources:

Schudel, Matt. "Controversial Publisher Lyle Stuart." Washington Post, June 26, 2006.

Stuart, Lyle. "The Outrageous Lyle." The Independent, December 1971.