Kaplan, Justin

Justin Kaplan, in full Justin Daniel Kaplan, (born September 5, 1925, New York, New York, U.S.—died March 2, 2014, Cambridge, Massachusetts), American writer, biographer, and book editor who was best known for his acclaimed literary biographies of Mark Twain, Lincoln Steffens, and Walt Whitman and for his editing of the 16th edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (1992).

Kaplan grew up in New York City. After graduating from Harvard University (B.S., 1945), he attended graduate school but left in 1947 and worked for various publishers, including Simon & Shuster, where he rose to senior editor. In that capacity he worked with such authors as Bertrand Russell, Will Durant, Níkos Kazantzákis, and the sociologist C. Wright Mills.

In 1959 Kaplan left publishing to write his first book, a biography of Mark Twain titled Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain (1966), which won both a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award. Kaplan began the biography with Clemens at age 31 rather than at the beginning of his life, a device that was later emulated by other biographers. Also well regarded were Kaplan’s Lincoln Steffens: A Biography (1974), about the prominent journalist and muckraker of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Walt Whitman: A Life (1980), which won a National Book Award.

Kaplan lectured at Harvard and at Emerson College, Boston, and was biographer in residence at the Institute for Modern Biography at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. He edited several anthologies. As general editor for Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (1992), he preferred more-contemporary quotes, including ones by filmmaker Woody Allen (“It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”) and Kermit the Frog (“It’s not that easy bein’ green.”) as well as one attributed to debonair actor Cary Grant (“Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.”).