Yale Bulletin and Calendar

September 6-13, 1999

Volume 28, Number 3

Chester Kerr, editor emeritus
of the Yale University Press, dies

Chester Brooks Kerr, a Yale College alumnus who spent three decades of his publishing career at the Yale University Press, died on Aug. 22 in New London, New Hampshire. He was 86 years old.

Mr. Kerr worked at the Yale Press from 1949 until 1979, serving as secretary of the publishing house for 10 years and then as its director for the next 20 years. He is credited with moving the Yale Press in many innovative directions during his tenure. In addition to introducing a line of scholarly paperbounds and establishing a strong presence in London, Mr. Kerr organized the Yale Press as a department of the University.

One year before joining the Yale Press, Mr. Kerr was invited to direct a study on the status of scholarly publishing in the United States. "A Report on American University Presses," known as "The Kerr Report," was sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. It was published by the Association of American University Presses in 1949.

Mr. Kerr maintained that in addition to teaching and research, a university's third function is publishing. In interviews following the report's release, he also defended university presses' publishing of scholarly works with "commercial potential."

"It is our way," he said, "of trying to place the university press in the mainstream of contributions to society. If -- within the boundaries of scholarship always -- we can make a contribution to culture, to politics, to the environment, then we shouldn't stand aside."

Among the wide range of books published during Mr. Kerr's reign as director of the Yale Press are Robert Manson Myers' "The Children of Pride" and Sidney Ahlstrom's "A Religious History of the American People" -- both National Book Award winners in 1972; Robert Dahl's "Who Governs?"; Joseph Albers' "The Interaction of Color"; "The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation," edited by R.A. Skelton, et al.; Sir John Masterman's "The Double-Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945"; Elizabeth Murray's "Caught in the Web of Words: James Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary"; and Mark Girouard's "Life in an English Country House."

Born in Norwalk, Connecticut, Mr. Kerr graduated from the University School in Cleveland and entered Yale College with the Class of 1936. He roomed with John Hersey, who went on to become a famous author and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize.

After graduation, Mr. Kerr entered the publishing field as an editor at Harcourt, Brace. He spent four years there before becoming director of the new Atlantic Monthly Press in 1940. With the onset of World War II he became chief of the book department of the Office of War Information.

At the end of the war, Mr. Kerr helped transform the Office of War Information into the Department of State USIS library system. He returned to publishing in 1947 as vice president of Reynal & Hitchcock, resigning from that firm in 1948 to work on the Kerr Report.

Following his retirement from Yale, Mr. Kerr became president of the newly revived firm Ticknor & Fields, a Houghton Mifflin company, where he stayed until 1985. Under his initiative, the company became a force for quality publishing, listing among its contemporary authors Calvin Trillin, John Mortimer, Olive Ann Burns and John Hersey.

Mr. Kerr's analysis of changes in university press publishing during the four decades since the appearance of his original study was published in 1986, the same year the Yale Press editor emeritus was elected to the Publishers Hall of Fame.

Mr. Kerr was the widower of Joan Paterson Kerr, who died in 1995. He is survived by four sons, John Kerr of Lincoln, Massachusetts, Philip Kerr of Ann Arbor, Michigan; Alexander Kerr of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Brooks Kerr of New York, New York; a daughter, Claudia Kerr Grose of Cambridge, Massachusetts; three stepchildren; and 13 grandchildren.

Donations in Mr. Kerr's memory may be made to the Yale University Press, P.O. Box 209040, New Haven, CT 06520.

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In the News . . .

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Chester Kerr, editor emeritus of the Yale University Press, dies

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Campus Notes