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Graeme Mercer Adam (May 25, 1839 – October 30, 1912) was a Canadian author, editor, and publisher.

Early life

Adam was born in Loanhead, Scotland, on May 25, 1839. He was named after the owner of the estates where his father was a factor. His parents were James Adam and Margaret Wishart. Adam was educated in Edinburgh and worked in the publishing business in that city. He moved to Toronto to continue publishing books, perhaps at the invitation of John Cunningham Geikie.

Business in Toronto

When Geikie moved to England in 1860, Adam and James Rollo bought part of Geikie's business. Even though the partnership did not own a printing press, they bought original publishing works in Toronto. They also produced local editions of writings by British and American authors, often without purchasing the rights to print them. One of their first publications was British American Magazine, and Adam wrote reviews for the magazine. When Rollo retired in 1866 Adam formed a new partnership with John Horace Stevenson and their business expanded. That same year Adam commanded a regiment of the Queen's Own Rifles of Canada at the Battle of Ridgeway against the Fenian Brotherhood.

In 1870 the company restarted their Canada Bookseller journal, which published local writers. In 1872 Adam and John Lovell co-wrote A letter to Sir John Rose, bart., k.c.m.g., on the Canadian copyright question. That same year the company published a new journal edited by Adam called Canadian Monthly and National Review which espoused the values of the Canada First movement. Adam's company had financial difficulties in 1876 and he withdrew from editing the publication. That same year he joined Lovell, John Wurtele and Francis L. Wesson to form an American publishing company in New York City called Lovell, Adam, Wesson and Company. The firm would obtain British works from American sources, then import them into Canada as pirated works. In 1878 Adam returned to Toronto and the following year resumed his role as editor of Canadian Monthly. Declined readership resulted in the journal ending publication in 1882.

Adam began Canada Educational Monthly in 1879, a journal focused on the development of education in Ontario. In the 1880s Adam was secretary and literary assistant to Goldwin Smith's journal called Bystander. Smith started The Week in 1883, and Adam joined the magazine as a staff writer. He also prepared educational materials and school readers to be used in schools.

Adam was born in Scotland where he developed a deep interest in publishing. He moved to Toronto to run a bookstore. He shortly teamed with a partner to form Rollo & Adam, which ventured into publishing. Their first significant publication was entitled British American Magazine. It was edited by Henry Youle Hind, a geologist and writer about the Canadian northwest. The publication, although short-lived, was the first of a long series of important Canadian periodicals published by Adam. However, "his connection with the Commercial Union agitation injured his popularity in later years".

In 1891 Adam published a book "to Mark the Hundredth Anniversary of the Passing of the Constitutional Act of 1791, which Set Apart the Province of Upper Canada and Gave Birth to York", entitled "Toronto, Old and New..."

Personal life

Adam married his first wife, Jane Beasly Gibson, in 1863. They had eight children together before her death in 1884. He married his second wife, Frances Isabel Brown, in 1891. They had at least one child together.