Justin Kaplan (born Justin Daniel
Kaplan (September 5, 1925, New
York, New York, USA; March 2,
2014 Cambridge, Massachusetts),
United States Author,
biographer, and book publisher,
known for his acclaimed literary
biographies of Mark Twain,
Lincoln Stephens, and Walt
Whitman, as well as his
sixteenth edition of Bartlett’s
Quotations (1992 ).

Kaplan grew up in New York
City. After graduating from
Harvard University (BS, 1945),
he entered graduate school but
left in 1947 to work for various
publishers, including Simon &
Shuster, where he rose to editor-
in-chief. In this role, he has
collaborated with writers such
as Bertrand Russell, Will Durant,
Nikos Kazantzakis, and sociologist C. Wright Mills.

In 1959, Kaplan left publishing
to begin writing his first book, a
biography of Mark Twain titled
Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain
(1966), which won the Pulitzer
Prize and the National book
award. Kaplan began his
biography of Clemnens at age 31
rather than at an early age, a
practice later followed by other
biographers. Kaplan’s Lincoln
Steffens: A Biography (1974) tells
the story of the famous
journalist and illegitimate son in
the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, while Walt Whitman:
A Life (1980) won a National
Book Award and received a lot
of attention.

Kaplan has taught at Harvard
University and Emerson College
in Boston, and is a biographer-
in-residence at the Institute of
Modern Biography at Griffith
University in Brisbane,
Australia. He edited several
anthologies. As editor-in-chief of
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations
(1992), he favored more
contemporary quotes, including
that of filmmaker Woody Allen
(“It’s not that I’m afraid of death.

I just don’t want to be there
when it happens.” ) and Kermit
the Frog (“It’s not that easy to be
green.”) and one goes to the
classy actor Cary Grant
(“Everyone wants to be Cary
Grant. Even I want to be Cary
Grant.”).