Barney Rosset was born in 1922 in Chicago to a Jewish father and an Irish Catholic mother. He was briefly married to the Abstract Expressionist American painter Joan Mitchell. He bought Grove Press in 1951, and sold it to the Getty family in 1985. He died in 2012.
This book changed my life. After I discovered it in a used book shop in Cincinnati in the early 1990's, it was my path to find new authors I would not have been exposed to in those pre-internet times.
I began reading articles, excerpts, sections, and complete portions of this book at the age of ten-eleven. It's got a incredible assortment of writing---essay, fiction, non-fiction, poetry and review. I've used it as a reference to find authors, works, and anthologies of literature throughout my life.
It's a ten-year anthology of America's leading literary magazine, Hardcover– 1968, By Barney Rosset (editor), Grove Press, 778 pages.