Letters from a Self-made Merchant to His Son - Hardcover

George Horace Lorimer

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0491007523 ISBN 13: 9780491007528

Publisher: W.H. Allen / Virgin Books, 1972

Synopsis

1902. Being the letters written by John Graham, head of the House of Graham and Company, pork packers in Chicago, familiarly known on the exchange as "Old Gorgon Graham," to his son, Pierrepont, facetiously known to his intimates as "Piggy."

About this title

About the Author

George Horace Lorimer (October 6, 1867 – October 22, 1937) was an American journalist and author. He is best known as the editor of The Saturday Evening Post. During his editorial reign, the Post rose from a circulation of several thousand to over a million. He is credited with promoting or discovering a large number of American writers, e.g. Jack London.

Lorimer was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of the Rev. George C. Lorimer and Belle Burford Lorimer. He attended Moseley High School in Chicago, Colby College, and Yale University. In 1899 he became editor-in-chief of The Saturday Evening Post, and remained in charge until the last day of 1936, about a year before his death from throat cancer. He served also as vice president, president, and chairman of Curtis Publishing Company, which publishes the Post.

In the early 1900s Lorimer published several books, including

Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son,

being the Letters written by John Graham, Head of the House of Graham & Company, Pork-Packers in Chicago, familiarly known on 'Change as "Old Gorgon Graham," to his Son, Pierrepont, facetiously known to his intimates as "Piggy."

From Publishers Weekly

Perhaps this book was a big hit when it first appeared in 1902, but it is preachy and unquaintly old-fashioned to the contemporary reader. Lorimer was an editor at the Saturday Evening Post, and this appears to be nothing more than a puffed-up piece from that magazine. The first "letter," written to Pierrepont Graham, a freshman at Harvard, by his pork-packing father in Chicago, contains all sorts of fatherly advice about college life, and what a young man should and should not do. But, as Pierrepont ages and goes to work in Dad's company, the homilies continue with few variations, and the folksy examples (one per chapter) of how not to behave, plus endless metaphors, become boring, and the book's conceit wears thin. There is much advice (indeed, that is all the book contains), but as Graham senior himself notes, it is the same advice that young men always hear. However, there are a few bright spots. Graham's rules for business conversation are useful and still timely: "Have something to say. Say it. Stop talking."
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W.H. Allen / Virgin Books
• Publication date: 1972
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0491007523
• ISBN 13: 9780491007528
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 312