Great Regulars: Sure, he was part of a lineage;

it's difficult to imagine [Barney] Rosset doing what he did for more than 30 years at Grove Press without the example of James Laughlin at the seminal independent New Directions or (further afield) Jack Kahane at Paris' Obelisk Press. And yet Grove, which Rosset bought in 1951 for $3,000 and ran until 1985, remains the touchstone, the publisher most responsible for breaking down American literary puritanism, for defending the idea that art, that literature, is meant to unsettle us, that among its central purposes is to challenge the status quo.

from David L. Ulin: Los Angeles Times: An appreciation: Barney Rosset, contemporary literature's champion

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