The following are five important figures from the 19th century who began their careers working in print shops, setting type and producing newspapers, broadsheets, and books.
•Walt Whitman
Widely considered America's greatest poet, Walt Whitman began working in a print shop in his early teens. After learning the trade, he published a local newspaper on Long Island. As a young man he worked for newspapers in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and briefly in New Orleans.
When Whitman published the first edition of his masterpiece, Leaves of Grass, he set the type himself in a Brooklyn printing shop. He also bound the pages and essentially created the book by hand.
When a publisher in Boston agreed to put out a later edition of Leaves of Grass, Whitman traveled to their offices and oversaw the production. For the rest of his life he was keenly attuned to how his work was published.More »
•Horace Greeley
One of the most influential men in American journalism, the founder and publisher of the New York Tribune got his start working in a print shop as a boy in his native New England.
Greeley was always proud of his background as a working printer. And the large monument on his grave in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery contains a panel depicting him as a boy, holding a printer's type case.
Becoming adept at spreading ideas through print, Greeley edited a Whig Party newspaper and a magazine before founding the New York Tribune in 1841. In the decades before the Civil War Greeley was one of the most influential Americans, and his anti-slavery views helped bring support for the eventual election of Abraham Lincoln.More »
•Mark Twain
America's great humorist got his start as a writer while helping his older brother set type for a newspaper in Missouri. His skill as a printer later led him on the road, to jobs in the West.
•William Lloyd Garrison
William Lloyd Garrison, a leading abolitionist, found his calling while working for a printer after being apprenticed in several other trades.
After publishing a small local newspaper that failed, Garrison began to realize the power of the printed word in advocating causes. He edited a newspaper affiliated with the temperance movement, and eventually discovered his true cause, the end of American slavery.
Garrison began publishing a newspaper, The Liberator, in 1831. He continued publishing his newspaper for 35 years. And though considered a fringe figure at first, he eventually exerted considerable influence on American public opinion.More »
•Thurlow Weed
Though he's not widely remembered today, Thurlow Weed was a printer and newspaper publisher who went on to exert great influence in 19th century politics. Weed, who learned printing in his teens, became the political boss of New York State, and was something of a mentor to Henry J. Raymond, the founder of the New York Times.