Bok, Edward William (1863-1930)

Netherlandish editor and author. Emigrating to the USA in 1870, Bok began working in newspapers at the age of 13. In 1884, he started a syndicate that sold women's features to newspapers; and in 1889 he was hired by Cyrus H K Curtis as editor of the Ladies' Home Journal. During his 30-year tenure authors such as Rudyard Kipling and Theodore Roosevelt contributed to the Journal, and Bok displayed an intuitive sense of his audience's interests. By 1900 it had the highest circulation of any US magazine.