Clark Bryan
Clark W. Bryan was a publisher, writer, poet, and journalist who is best known today for creating the home economics magazine Good Housekeeping that he would manage from 1885 until his death in 1899, during which time he published more than a hundred of his own poems in its issues. Prior to this, Bryan was extensively involved in the reorganization of the Springfield Republican as editorial and business partner to Samuel Bowles, following the death of Bowles' father; Bryan entered the business in 1852 serving as partner in the paper's printing firm Samuel Bowles and Co. Upon Bowles' dissolution of the partnership with himself and several other minor shareholders in his paper's printing business, Bryan went on to rechristen it the Clark W. Bryan & Co., which purchased and expanded the Springfield Union from 1872 to 1882 when it was sold to its editor-in-chief Joseph Shipley.
From 1880 until his death Bryan was also responsible for a successful trade publication, The Paper World, which was published in various iterations in Holyoke, Springfield, and finally out of the Pulitzer Building in New York City. By the time the paper had been moved to the latter in 1898, Bryan retained little more than creative input, and this sale to a separate company would ultimately fail. Bryan, who had lived to see his business empire in financial ruin, and wife and one of his sons had passed in recent years, took his life on January 23, 1899, with a pistol. All of his publications were promptly discontinued, the sole exception being Good Housekeeping, which immediately found a purchaser, John Pettigrew, who would sell it to his printer George D. Chamberlain, who in turn sold it to E. H. Phelps, another former Springfield Republican associate, whose company, Phelps Publishing, had offices in Springfield and New York. Gradually reaching national prominence, it was purchased by the Hearst Corporation in 1911.
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