Maxim Lieber was born in Warsaw, Poland to Jewish parents in 1897. In 1907, his family moved to New York City, where they settled in the Bronx.

In 1918, Lieber joined the West Ontario Regiment of the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force. In 1919, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, from which he was honorably discharged in 1920. After serving the in the army, Lieber founded a New York-based publishing house, Lieber & Lewis, which was eventually taken over by Albert Boni in 1923. In 1925, Lieber co-edited an anthology entitled Great Short Stories of the World for this publisher. From 1926-1930, Lieber worked as head of publishing for Brentano’s, an independent bookstore and publishing company.

In 1930, Lieber created the Maxim Lieber Literary Agency. Many significant authors were represented by the agency. It is likely that Langston Hughes, Erskine Caldwell, John Cheever, Nathan Asch, Bob Coates, Carson McCullers, Josephine Herbst, Thomas Wolfe, Louis Adamic, and more were affiliated with it, though in the absence of more detailed records in the Lieber fonds, this assertion cannot be confirmed. Lieber remained working at his agency until 1950.

Lieber, his wife, and their children moved to Mexico in 1951. Whittaker Chambers claimed in his 1952 memoir Witness that Lieber was involved in Communist espionage activities in New York City, which may explain Lieber’s departure from the United States. In 1954, Lieber moved with his family to Warsaw, Poland. After taking up brief residency in the United Kingdom in 1968, the Liebers returned to the United States, settling in East Hartford, Connecticut. Lieber died in this town on April 10, 1993.