Henry Regnery

Henry Regnery (1912-1996) was an American publisher.

Life and career

Regnery was born on January 5, 1912 in Hinsdale, Illinois, the next to youngest of five children of Frances Susan (Thrasher) and William Henry Regnery, a wealthy textile manufacturer. He obtained a degree in mechanical engineering from MIT in 1934, and an M.A. from Harvard University, where he worked with Joseph Schumpeter. He also studied at Armour Institute of Technology, and from 1934 to 1936 at the University of Bonn. Shortly after, he became a member of the America First Committee.

He financed the creation of Human Events in 1944. His publishing company, the Henry Regnery Company, now known as Regnery Publishing, would go on to publish two conservative classics, William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale (1951) and Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind (1953).

He was a member of the American Conservatory of Music and the Chicago Literary Club. He was also for a time the President of the Philadelphia Society. He was a trustee of Shimer College in the early 1960s. His papers are kept at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Regnery died in Chicago on June 18, 1996, of complications of brain surgery.

His son is lawyer, author and publisher Alfred S. Regnery.

Bibliography

• Creative Chicago: From the Chap-Book to the University
• The Cliff Dwellers: The History of a Chicago Cultural Institution
• Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher