author
1896–1974
A poet, editor, and publisher from Vermont, he helped shape American literary culture in several ways at once—winning the Yale Younger Poets Prize early on, co-founding major publishing houses, and playing a key role in the start of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
by John Chipman Farrar
Born in Burlington, Vermont, in 1896, he served during World War I and then graduated from Yale in 1919. While still connected to Yale, he won the Yale Younger Poets Prize for Forgotten Shrines, an early sign that his career would span both writing and publishing.
He went on to become editor of The Bookman and later helped found two influential publishing houses: Farrar & Rinehart and, after World War II, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Archival and reference sources also connect him closely with the early history of Bread Loaf: Middlebury identifies John C. Farrar as the first director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, founded in 1926.
Farrar died in New York City in 1974. He is remembered less for a single book than for the wide literary world he helped build—through editing, publishing, and creating spaces where writers could meet, learn, and be discovered.