Books: Philadelphia Renaissance

Philadelphia, birthplace of U.S. book publishing, took another whack at Manhattan's near-monopoly last fortnight. The sturdy old Philadelphia firm of J. B. Lippincott, climaxing four years of expansion, bought control of the old Manhattan firm of Frederick A. Stokes. Like many another U.S. book publisher, both Lippincott and Stokes have remained one-family institutions. But Lippincott, aged 149 this year, has kept greener than Stokes.

Four generations and seven individual Lippincotts have kept the Lippincott house in order. Its current president, tall, foxhunting, 54-year-old Joseph Wharton Lippincott, got off to a slow start. But in 1936 he hired as manager of the trade department canny, hard-boiled Frank Henry, former sales manager of Doubleday, Doran. Henry brought Christopher Morley and Kitty Foyle with him, gave Lippincott a more up-to-date approach to the chancy best-seller field.

When Henry went over to Wilfred Funk, Joe Lippincott hired young, capable George Stevens, onetime editor of the Saturday Review of Literature. Last January he bought control of young but promising Carrick & Evans, made young but promising Lynn Carrick a director of the company. Always strong in the field of textbooks, medical books, other specialized works, Lippincott found its general trade list bolstered by Carrick & Evans' Frank Hough, John Chamberlain, Princess Paul Sapieha, David Loth.

Stokes, a 60-year-old house which in its time has published Frances Hodgson Burnett, John Masefield, Gertrude Atherton, Robert 0. Peary, General Pershing, Louis Bromfield, will publish under its own imprint for a while. It brings with it such current authors as Ellery Queen, John Erskine, Eugene Lyons and a strong juvenile list.