Justin Kaplan

This biography of a living person does not cite any references or sources. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately.(August 2009) Find sources: (Justin Kaplan – news, books, scholar)

Justin Kaplan (September 5, 1925, New York) is an American writer and editor.

Kaplan received his bachelor of science degree from Harvard University in 1944. After pursuing a post-graduate degree for two years, he left graduate school to work for a publishing house, where he eventually became a senior editor.

Kaplan left publishing for writing in 1959 and began work on his first biography, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain, a study of the famous author that was published in 1966. The book was a tremendous critical success, winning both the Pulitzer Prize for biography and a National Book Award in 1967. He followed this up with two more well-received biographies, Lincoln Steffens, A Biography (1974), and Walt Whitman, A Life (1980), which won an American Book Award. He also edited several anthologies and the 16th edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1992).

Kaplan's most recent book is When the Astors Owned New York: Blue Bloods and Grand Hotels in a Gilded Age (2006).

Kaplan married author Anne Bernays in 1954 and has written a double memoir with her entitled Back Then: Two Lives in 1950s New York. Kaplan and Bernays live in Cambridge and Truro Massachusetts.

Kaplan is Jewish.