Alfred Smith Barnes

Alfred Smith Barnes (January 28, 1817 in New Haven, Connecticut – February 17, 1888 in Brooklyn, New York) was an American publisher.

Publishing Company

He founded the A.S. Barnes publishing company when he was 16, and it soon became the leading publisher of textbooks in the United States. In the 1950s, they became the major publisher of sports reference books, with groundbreaking books such as The Baseball Encyclopedia by Hy Turkin and S.C. Thompson and Roger Treat's Football Encyclopedia. Both titles represented the first entry in the genre for their respective sports.

In addition to its prominence in the fields of textbook and sports publishing, A. S. Barnes & Co. was a major general publisher of titles on an enormous range of subjects.

Barnes managed his company until his retirement in 1880. The company continued to publish until 1982.

[N.B.: Bibliographic entries sometimes cite this publisher as "Barnes", omitting the initials "A. S."]

Philanthropy

Barnes was a major benefactor of Cornell University and one of the chief proponents of building an elevated railroad in New York City

External links

• Article on Major American Publishers