Curtis, Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar, 1850–1933, American publisher and philanthropist, b. Portland, Maine. He started his first periodical, The People's Ledger, in Boston in 1872. Later, in Philadelphia he started a periodical called the Tribune and Farmer. The women's column of this paper was so successful that in 1883 it became The Ladies' Home Journal; under the editorship of Curtis's son-in-law, Edward W. Bok, it soon became the most important magazine of its kind. Curtis founded (1890) the Curtis Publishing Company and in 1897 purchased the Saturday Evening Post, which, with his editor George Horace Lorimer, he built up to a position of eminence. Country Gentleman was bought in 1911. In 1913 he purchased the Philadelphia Public Ledger. This was the first of his newspaper ventures. Among others purchased were the Philadelphia Press (1920), the New York Evening Post (1924), and the Philadelphia Inquirer (1930). His newspapers were never as successful as his magazines, and he eventually had to sell three of them at a loss. Throughout his life, Curtis donated money to hospitals, museums, and schools.
See E. W. Bok, A Man from Maine (1923).
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