Early Life and Education
Nelson Doubleday was born in Brooklyn, New York to Frank Nelson Doubleday (of French Huguenot descent, from a DuBaldy family) and Neltje Blanchan. His older brother Felix Doty was adopted, and he had a younger sister Dorothy. In the city, the children attended a private Friends School run by Quakers. The family moved out to a large estate in Locust Valley on Long Island, called "Effendi" after their father's nickname given to him by his friend, the British author Rudyard Kipling. The author wrote his Just So Stories after the boy Nelson asked him to publish a book of animal stories.
Nelson grew up in the world of book publishing, as his father had founded the Doubleday company. His mother wrote several books about gardening and birds, which were considered notable for their combination of scientific content and lyrical expression.
Nelson later studied at a private school in Ossining, New York. He attended two years of New York University before joining his father in business, which he found more interesting. Even as a youth, he had creative solutions to business issues, for instance, suggesting selling dated magazines at a discount and thereby gaining some revenue from them.
Read more about this topic: Nelson Doubleday
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature—if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you—know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The Supreme Court would have pleased me more if they had concerned themselves about enforcing the compulsory education provisions for Negroes in the South as is done for white children. The next ten years would be better spent in appointing truant officers and looking after conditions in the homes from which the children come. Use to the limit what we already have.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)