Publisher. He was the founder of the publishing company P.F. Collier and Son and the popular magazine known as Collier's Weekly, that went by several names from April 1888 until January 1957. As a result of his pioneering investigative journalism, Collier's Weekly established a reputation as a proponent of social reform of the time and it attracted many leading writers, including Jack London and Upton Sinclair. Born Peter Fenelon Collier, he emigrated to Dayton, Ohio with his family in 1866 and was employed in the railcar factories there. In 1868 he attended Saint Mary's Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio for 4 years, with the intention on becoming a Catholic priest, but decided to become a businessman. He worked for the schoolbook publisher Sandler and Company for 6 months as a salesman and in 1873, with money that he had saved, he purchased the electrotype plates of the popular Catholic work "Father Burke's Lectures" and went into the publishing business on his own. In 1874 he published a biography of Pope Pius IX and along with the publication of appealing editions of standard authors, he became quite successful, with enormous sales in the US and Canada. He later published "Chandler's Encyclopedia," "Chamber's Encyclopedia," several editions of the Bible, "Collier's Encyclopedia of Social and Commercial Information," and the "New American Encyclopedia of Social and Commercial Information." In 1888 he founded Collier's Once a Week magazine (renamed Collier's Weekly: An Illustrated Journal in 1895 and years later it was shortened to Collier's) and by 1892 it had a circulation of over 250,000 and became one of the largest selling magazines in the US. An avid horseman and hunter, he was a member of several riding and hunting clubs around New York City and would frequently show his horses and hunting dogs. In 1885 he built a hunting club on his property in Wickatunk, New Jersey, complete with a kennel and stable, and later built a home that was a replica of George Washington's Mount Vernon, naming it Rest Hill, which still stands today. In 1908 he received an honorary Doctor of Laws Degree from Seton Hall University in South Orange Village, New Jersey. He died suddenly of a stroke at the age of 59 while attending a horse show and his son, Robert J. Collier, took over the family publishing business after his death. His nephew, Robert Collier, became a successful author and founder of Robert Collier Publications. In February 2012 Collier's magazine was revived and published bimonthly.