John shaw billings jr biography

John Shaw Billings (1898–1975) was the first editor of Life magazine and first managing editor of Time-Life.^[1][2]

Background

Billings descended from U.S.

Senator James Henry Hammond (1807–1864). His grandfather (also John Shaw Billings) was an Army medical doctor during the Civil War. After the war, he established an Army medical library with the first modern bibliographical system for medical knowledge.

He later became one of the best-known, early 20th-century librarians as director of the New York Public Library.^[2]

Billings was born at Redcliffe manor in Beech Island, South Carolina, a plantation built by his great-grandfather the senator (famed for the saying "Cotton is king").^[1]

He left Harvard University to drive ammunition trucks for the army of France in World War I.^[1]

Career

After the great war, Billings became a reporter for the Bridgeport Telegram.

Fired for his purple pros