A Publisher's Classic: W. W. Norton and Crane Brinton's The Anatomy of Revolution

In 1938, William Warder Norton, president of W. W. Norton and Company, published The Anatomy of Revolution, a comparative history written by a forty-year old Associate Professor of History at Harvard University, Crane Brinton. In it, Brinton discerned tentative uniformities occurring in four important modern revolutions. The Anatomy of Revolution is still in print and is now in its fourth edition. It is generally considered to be a classic, and is arguably Brinton's most recognized work. However, William Warder Norton's contribution to the entire endeavor has yet to be fully explored. This paper will investigate the authorial and editorial relationship between Crane Brinton and William Warder Norton. By analyzing correspondence between the two men before, during, and after publication, it hopes to reveal the ways in which Norton shaped Brinton's book and his subsequent success as a historian.
The paper argues that Norton's editorial contribution is an important contextual element to the history of The Anatomy of Revolution. Without the assistance of Norton and his editorial team, The Anatomy of Revolution would not be the classic it is today, and Brinton would certainly be lesser known. Norton was able to bring out the best in Brinton by pruning the weaker aspects of his manuscript. He kept Brinton's book from becoming one of a host of polemical books on revolution written during this period—books that are largely forgotten today. Norton also directed Brinton towards a middlebrow audience, allowing him to transcend the world of academic presses which he was familiar with but which could have also hidden his talent over time.