Liberty Hyde Bailey

Bailey dominated the field of horticultural literature, writing some sixty-five books and a large number of individual entries in the several large encyclopedias that he edited. Between 1889 and 1896 he wrote half of the Cornell University Experiment Station Bulletins. His writing skill so impressed George P. Brett, president of Macmillan and Co., that he told Bailey to send along the title whenever he had a book under way because Macmillan would publish anything he wrote. The books sold well; from his first book, The Horticulturist’s Rule Book, published in 1885, to his last, The Garden of Bellflowers, in 1953, almost one million copies were sold.

From 1890 to 1940, Bailey edited 117 titles by 99 authors from all over the country, covering subjects in agronomy, economics, botany, pomology, animal husbandry, dairy industry, soils and fertilizers, plant pathology, commercial floriculture, and home economics. He edited the popular monthly magazine, American Garden, from 1890 to 1892, and another magazine, Country Life in America, from 1901 to 1903. He originated many series of books, including Rural Life, Garden Craft, Open Country, Rural Science, Rural Text-Book, and Rural Manual, all published by Macmillan. He published at least 1,300 articles and over 100 papers in pure taxonomy, including a 1000-page monograph, Rubus in North America, in 1945 with supplements in 1947 and 1949.