The news of publisher Barney Rosset's death comes with great sadness. In 2010, Columbia University Libraries announced it had acquired the personal papers of the legendary Grove Press publisher.

Rosset, the founder and genius behind Grove, was best known for bringing out the first legal American editions of D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, and William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch, and for Grove's literary magazine, the Evergreen Review.

The archive documents Rosset's personal life from his early days in Chicago, through his activities as a controversial filmmaker and publisher, and includes FBI and CIA files on Rosset, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act. Rosset continued his interest in politic and photography during a visit to Nicaragua, recording hundreds of images of their general election in February 1990. "Remembering Samuel Beckett," a chapter of Rosset's forthcoming autobiography, The Subject is Left-handed, appeared in Conjunctions 53 (Fall 2009) and was awarded a Pushcart Prize.

Rosset was 89 when he passed on Tuesday.