John Macrae, Jr.

https://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/11/obituaries/john-macrae-jr-a-book...

JOHN MACRAE JR., A BOOK PUBLISHER

John Macrae Jr. of Naples, Fla., former chairman of the board of E. P. Dutton, the publishing company that under his leadership published the Winnie the Pooh series, died of heart failure Friday at his summer home in Nantucket, Mass. He was 86 years old.

The success of the Winnie the Pooh books, written by the English author A. A. Milne and first published in the United States by Dutton in 1926, is often credited to Mr. Macrae's innovative marketing. To promote the books, Mr. Macrae made a deal with Macy's for the department store to take 5,000 copies of the first book of the series, When We Were Very Young, and to feature them in its windows for several months.

Under Mr. Macrae's leadership, Dutton also published such successful titles as Alex Munthe's meditative memoir The Story of San Michele, the Mickey Spillane detective novels, and John Roy Carlson's Undercover, an investigative report on the Nazi's fifth column activities in the United States.

Joined Company in 1921

Mr. Macrae was the second of three family members to head E. P. Dutton. He joined the company in 1921 as its marketing director under his father, John Macrae Sr., who was then the firm's vice president and became its president in 1923.

Following his father's death in 1944, Mr. Macrae became the company's board chairman. In 1950, illness forced him to retire, but he resumed the job in 1968, when his son, John Macrae 3d, became the company's president. He retired in 1974, when the company was sold to the Dutch publishing concern, Elsevier.

Mr. Macrae was born in The Plains, Va., in 1897. He grew up on Staten Island, and graduated from the University of Virginia in 1917. He then joined the Army and served in World War I as a first lieutenant in France.

In addition to his son, Mr. Macrae is survived by his second wife, the former Jane S. Niederinghaus; his daughter, Pamela Bermingham of South Londonderry, Vt., and 14 grandchildren. His first marriage, to the former Anne Hinton, ended with her death in 1974.