Angus Cameron

Donald Angus Cameron (December 25, 1908 – November 18, 2002), publicly known by his middle name, was an American book editor and publisher. Cameron scored his first success handling The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer for Indianapolis publisher Bobbs-Merrill Company in 1936. He moved to Little, Brown and Company in 1938.

While editor at Little, Brown, Cameron was responsible for the promotion of then-unknown writer J. D. Salinger, controversial poet Ogden Nash, and various left wing authors including Lillian Hellman, Howard Fast, and Carey McWilliams. In 1947 the politically radical Cameron became a public target of red-baiting led by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. over Little, Brown's refusal to publish Animal Farm by George Orwell. He was ultimately forced out at Little, Brown in 1951 over controversy surrounding the proposed publication of Communist author Howard Fast's novel Spartacus.

Following his departure from Little, Brown, Cameron found himself blacklisted from the mainstream publishing industry due to the pervasive climate of McCarthyism. In 1953 Cameron formed his own left wing publishing house, Cameron Associates, later joining forces with radical publisher Albert E. Kahn to launch the publishing house Cameron and Kahn. The blacklisting of Cameron ended only in 1959 when New York publisher Alfred A. Knopf hired him as a senior editor.

Background

Donald Angus Cameron, known as "Angus," was born to a Scottish-American family in Indianapolis, Indiana, on December 25, 1908.

Following his graduation from high school, Cameron attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, from which he graduated with honors in History and Political Science in 1930. While at DePauw Cameron was introduced to radical political ideas, attending meetings of the Communist Party-affiliated John Reed Club. Although sympathetic to those who thought communism might be the answer to the devastation of the Great Depression, Cameron never joined the Communist Party, according to his biographer, Jonathan Coleman. Counterattack listed 31 authors from Little, Brown's stable as "fellow travelers" and intimated that the entire publishing house was little more than a "Communist front." Cameron later joined forces with similarly marginalized and blacklisted book editor Albert E. Kahn to form the publishing house Cameron and Kahn. The pair published a number of non-fiction titles, including a 1955 book by ex-FBI informant Harvey Matusow entitled False Witness, in which Matusow confessed to having made false accusations of Communist Party affiliation against approximately 200 people. Their marriage lasted 62 years (until her death in 1998); they had two children. The material deals with aspects of Cameron's biography, including his childhood, editorial stints with Bobbs-Merrill and Little, Brown, his appearances before various congressional committees, and anecdotes about various literary figures with whom he dealt during his career, including C. S. Forester, Ogden Nash and Norman Mailer. The Nightwatchers (1972) The L.L. Bean Game And Fish Cookbook with Judith Jones (1983)