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America's oldest publisher to celebrate 200th

By STEPHEN J. MORGAN, UPI Business Writer

PHILADELPHIA -- Fledgling businesses often obtain financing from a variety of sources, but a Philadelphia company is probably the only firm in existence that got its start with $400 provided by the Marquis de Lafayette.

Lea & Febiger is the oldest publisher in the United States, and on Friday it will celebrate the 200th anniversary of its founding. The day is a special one for the company's four partners, whose families have owned the firm for two centuries.

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'It means a lot to me because my great-great-great grandfather founded the company,' said Francis Carey Lea Jr. 'I'm the only Lea left in the firm right now.

'In this day and age it's a very unusual situation,' he added. 'There are very few businesses that have been in business this long no matter what (field) they're in.'

The firm, which specializes in the highly competitive field of medical books and other titles related to the life sciences, was founded by Mathew Carey, a political revolutionary born in Dublin in 1760.

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Carey fled to France at age 21 after some of his writings rubbed British authorities the wrong way. He went to work in a print shop owned by Benjamin Franklin, sent to France by the Continental Congress.

Carey worked for Franklin for a brief time and later for a French publisher, but returned to Ireland in 1782. Once again his writings upset the authorities.

'He spent a short time in jail and upon his release fled to Philadelphia, disguised as a woman to avoid the watchful British port authorities,' recounts an in-house history of Lea & Febiger, updated to commemorate the company's bicentennial.

Carey had little money but a valuable connection. Lafayette, whom he had met in Paris, gave him $400 and he used the money to start a newspaper, Carey's Pennsylvania Evening Herald, on Jan. 25, 1785.

From the newspaper grew the publishing firm of M. Carey and Company, which published James Fennimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, Edgar Allen Poe, Sir Walter Scott and others.

The firm underwent 17 name changes before becoming Lea & Febiger in 1908.

The company's three other partners are Christian C. Febiger Spahr and John Febiger Spahr -- both grandsons of Christian C. Febiger, who became a partner in 1880 -- and Christian C. Febiger Spahr Jr., who is Febiger's great-grandson.

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Lea & Febiger no longer publishes fiction. At the end of the 19th century the company began concentrating on the life sciences, and today it publishes books on human medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, dental hygiene, biology, animal science, health, physical education and recreation.

Lea & Febiger, which contracts with other companies for typesetting, printing and binding, produces 40 to 45 new books or new editions of existing books each year. The firm's catalog lists 341 titles, half of them in medicine. Only two of the company's books -- one on diabetes, the other on emphysema -- are intended for the general reader.

The company, which has 65 employees and occupies a stately building on Washington Square, is best known for publishing all 30 American editions of Gray's Anatomy, first printed in 1859.

Since that year, Lea & Febiger has sold 925,000 copies of the famous text. The inexpensive editions of Gray's found in many bookstores are copies of the 1904 edition, which is now in the public domain, Lea said.

As a private company, Lea & Febiger releases no figures on sales or earnings. But Lea said the firm is among the top 10 in sales among the nation's 100 medical publishers and is doing well despite recent sluggishness.

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'In the last two years sales haven't been as good as they were in the past eight or nine years,' he said. 'But I think you'll find that's true in almost every medical publisher.'

Lea, 65, said he and his partners have turned down numerous requests to sell the company. 'It's a family owned business and we intend to keep it that way,' he stated.

Lea said the firm's longevity would probably come as a surprise to his great-great-great grandfather, if he were alive today.

Said Lea: 'I doubt if even he thought it would last 200 years.'

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