John Martin may not be a household name, but to anyone interested in contemporary literature of the past 50 or 60 years he is well known as the founder, editor and publisher of Black Sparrow Press, which introduced such now renowned and semi-famous authors as Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Bowles, Lucia Berlin, Robert Creeley, Diane Wakoski, John Ashbery, Wanda Coleman and above all Charles Bukowski to readers all over the world.

Martin sold Black Sparrow and retired more than 20 years ago; he died at 94 last month in Santa Rosa. His contribution to independent publishing is immeasurable.

The owner of an office supply business and collector of first editions in Los Angeles in the mid-1960s, Martin discovered Bukowski’s poetry and prose in the little magazines and underground newspapers of that era. The writer’s rough-edged, uncouth, unmistakably authentic voice was a revelation to him. Bukowski, in his 40s at the time, was scraping by as an employee of the postal service. Martin sought him out in the shabby court where he lived and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: he would send him $100 a month if he would quit his job, write full time and let Martin publish his books. Martin sold his collection of first editions for $50,000 and started Black Sparrow with the disreputable Bukowski as its only author.

By the early 1970s, as Bukowski became increasingly popular if still beneath the dignity of respectable East Coast literary culture, Black Sparrow was able to publish many other writers on the strength of his sales, including translations of his work in Europe, where he soon became more famous than in the States. He and Martin worked together with extraordinary symbiosis, the prodigious poet pouring out a nonstop stream of poems and sending them to Martin, who assembled them in collections that grew in size and reach with every volume. The author’s stories and novels (of which “Women” and “Ham on Rye” are the most enduring) followed, and with Bukowski as its marquee star, Black Sparrow’s prestige soared in its marginal niche of the marketplace.

Beyond John Martin’s taste for out-of-the-mainstream talent, the Black Sparrow brand was co-created and greatly enhanced by the distinctive graphic style of his wife and book designer, Barbara Martin, whose eye for typography and composition and color and texture of cover stock made their 6-by-9-inch volumes instantly recognizable for their understated beauty and elegantly original look and feel. Black Sparrow books had no blurbs on the back or any other marketing gimmicks, just the plainspoken integrity of their presentation and the confidence that their quality would generate word of mouth.

Martin understood from the outset that Bukowski, like his predecessor Walt Whitman in the vernacular tradition, though initially regarded (and still judged by many) as a vulgar barbarian, was a singular and signature presence in American literature and that his voice would resonate for generations. More than 30 years since his death, that insight has proved prophetic.

Over the years, I’ve published several critical essays and reviews of Bukowski — some of them in Santa Cruz newspapers — and on account of that engagement with his work I was invited by Martin in the 1990s to visit Black Sparrow’s offices. The press had migrated north from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara and finally to Santa Rosa, where the publisher gave me a tour of his operation. He showed me the long file drawers where he kept literally yards of Bukowski’s unpublished manuscripts. His books continue to be issued by Ecco Press, an imprint of Harper Collins, which in 2002 purchased those files and the rights to their author for more than a million dollars.

John Martin’s early grasp of Charles Bukowski’s magnitude, and their shared courage, struck gold for both of them. He set a brilliant and unique example for subsequent independent publishers.

Stephen Kessler is the author of “Moving Targets: On Poets, Poetry & Translation.” His column appears on Saturdays.