Robert L. Crowell, former head of the Thomas Y. Crowell Company (now part of HarperCollins), died June 29 in Florida. He was 92.
Crowell was the grandson of the company's founder, who began publishing books in 1876 and was the first American publisher of Tolstoy and Gogol. Robert Crowell joined the company as a salesman in 1931, and was elected president and treasurer in 1937. He established college, secondary school, reference and children's book divisions; many of the children's books he published are still on the HarperCollins list, including Chanticleer and the Fox and the Betsy & Tacy series. He also developed the Columbia University Reading course. In addition to his career in publishing, Crowell was director of the American Book Publishing Council and a director of his alma mater's Yale University Press.
