Thomas Elliott Donnelley
(1867-1955)
Thomas Elliott Donnelley was born in
1867. Following his graduation from Yale in 1889, he joined his fa-
ther's printing business. He was elected president of
R. R. Don-
nelley & Sons Company upon the death of his
father in 1899 and
served as its chairman from 1934 to 1952. He also became chair-
man of the Reuben H. Donnelley Corporation following the death
of his brother, Reuben, in 1929.
Donnelley headed the family business during a period of excep-
tional growth and opportunity for the firm. While in
1907 to negotiate the company's first contract to produce the En-
cyclopedia Britannica, he learned of a school for printing apprentices
in
he saw, and in 1908 founded the
Chicago, one of the earliest schools for apprentice training in the
country. During World War I he served as chairman of the pulp
and paper division oftheWar Industries Board. In
1964, in a speech
before the Graphics Art Council of Chicago, Henry Luce; the founder of
Time magazine, paid tribute to Donnelley for his dedication to his craft
and for his lofty ideals, recalling their meetings
during the six-to-eight-week period in 1927 when the company’s
first contract to print the magazine was negotiated.
Donnelley joined the Chicago Literary Club in 1901 and
served
as chairman of the Committee on Publications during the 1906-07 season.
He presented six papers during his fifty-four years as a
member of the Club.
Read before the Club: November 23, 1998
Over the years the
lationship with R.R. Donnelley & Sons
Company. In addition to this
anniversary book, they were the printers of the Club's first history,
The Chicago Literary Club: A History of Its First Fifty Years (pub-
lished in 1926), The Chicago Literary Club,
1924-1946 (published
in 1947), the Club's centennial volume. The First Hundred Years:
1874-1974 (1974) and its reprint in 1998, as well as many of the pub-
lished papers of the Club.