S. S. McClure

Samuel Sidney McClure (1857 – 1949) was a key figure in muckraking journalism. He founded and ran the widely circulated "McClure's Magazine" from June 1893 to 1911, when poor health and financial reorganization forced him out and many of his writers had defected to form their own magazine. "McClure's Magazine" published influential pieces by respected journalists and authors including Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, Burton J. Hendrick, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Willa Cather, and Lincoln Steffens. Through his magazine, he introduced Dr. Maria Montessori's new teaching methods to North America in 1911. McClure was a business partner of Frank Nelson Doubleday in Doubleday & McClure, ancestor to today's Doubleday imprint.

He was born in County Antrim, Ireland, and emigrated with his widowed mother to Indiana when he was 9 years old. He grew up nearly impoverished on a farm and graduated from Valparaiso High School in 1875. He worked his way through Knox College, where he co-founded its student newspaper, and later moved to New York City. In 1884, he established the McClure Syndicate, the first U.S. newspaper syndicate, which serialized books.