Horace Liveright

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

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.

Liveright believed that books could be marketed similarly to other media and was among the first to aggressively sell novels. Liveright was also a vocal campaigner against the strict literary censorship of the period.

Despite their successes, Liveright and Boni's relationship broke down and the pair chose to part ways. It is reported that they flipped a coin to decide who would buy the other out, and Liveright gained control. In 1923, Liveright's alcoholism started to take its toll. Throwing frequent, lavish parties, he would over-indulge many nights per week.

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 and had divorced actor Joseph Schildkraut in 1930. She filed for divorce four months later.

Liveright died of pneumonia on September 24, 1933, aged forty-nine. Years of alcoholism and his business failures likely contributed to his death. Bennett Cerf also explains that his hand was bitten badly by a woman he'd been arguing with, necessitating a long, grueling hospital stay shortly before his death. Six people were said to have attended his funeral.