R. R. Bowker

Richard Rogers Bowker (1848–1933) was an American editor, publisher and reformer. He edited Publishers Weekly for decades, helped Melvil Dewey and others launch the Library Journal in 1876, and built the firm that still bears his name into the leading publisher of reference works for the book trade. A lifelong advocate of authors' rights, he campaigned for international copyright and wrote Copyright: Its History and Its Law (1912). He was also active in civil service reform and independent Republican politics, and for many years was an executive of Edison electric lighting companies in New York.