“Plutarch's Lives” of Trade: The First Series of American Business Biographies

Abstract

Freeman Hunt, the founder of the first general business magazine published in the United States — known today as the Commercial and Financial Chronicle — was also responsible for the publication of the first series of biographies of American business men. Biographies of mercantile capitalists and a few industrial capitalists were a regular feature of his Merchant's Magazine and Commercial Review from its beginning in 1839, and in 1855 and 1857 appeared the Lives of American Merchants edited and published by Hunt.