DeWitt Wallace

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DeWitt Wallace (November 12, 1890 – March 30, 1981, also known as William Roy) was a United States magazine publisher. He co-founded Reader's Digest with his wife Lila Wallace and published the first issue in 1922.

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, where his father was on the faculty (and later president) of Macalester College, he attended Mount Hermon School as a youth (now Northfield Mount Hermon). Wallace went to college at Macalester from 1907 to 1909 but transferred to the University of California, Berkeley for two years. He returned to St. Paul in 1912 and was hired by a publishing firm specializing in farming literature.

During World War I, Wallace enlisted in the U.S. Army and was wounded in the Battle of Verdun. He spent four months in a French hospital, recovering from his injuries and passing the time by reading American magazines.

Returning to the U.S., Wallace spent every day of the next six months at the Minneapolis Public Library researching and condensing magazine articles. He wanted to create a magazine with articles on a wide variety of subjects, abridged so that each could be easily read. Wallace showed his sample magazine to Lila Bell Acheson, sister of an old college friend, who responded enthusiastically. He proposed to her and on October 15, 1921, they were married. The Wallaces decided to publish the magazine themselves and market it by direct mail. The first issue appeared on February 5, 1922. Reader's Digest soon became one of the most widely circulated periodicals in the world.

Wallace was also a noted philanthropist, donating much of his massive fortune to his alma mater Macalester College. An American art museum in Williamsburg, Virginia is also named for the Wallaces, where he was a major benefactor of Colonial Williamsburg. The DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, opened in 1985, is named in his honor.