The Editor
How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America
by Sara B. Franklin
Pub Date May 28 2024
Atria Books
Biographies & Memoirs
Atria Books and Netgalley provided me with a copy of The Editor for review:
A twenty-five-year-old Judith Jones spent most of her time at Doubleday’s Paris office wading through manuscripts and passing on projects—until one day, a book caught her eye. After reading it in one sitting, she begged her boss to consider publishing it. One year later, Anne Frank’s diary became a bestseller. An industry-defining career in publishing began at that moment.
During her more than fifty years as an editor at Alfred A. Knopf, Jones nurtured the careers of literary icons like Sylvia Plath, Anne Tyler, and John Updike, and launched new genres and trends in literature. As a pioneer of the cookbook revolution, she published Edna Lewis, M.F.K. Fisher, Claudia Roden, Madhur Jaffrey, James Beard, and Julia Child among others. By working behind the scenes, Jones helped turn these authors into household names, changing cultural mores and expectations.
The books Judith published spanned decades of America’s most dramatic cultural change, from the end of World War II to the civil rights movement and the fight for women’s equality. In this “thorough and humanizing portrait,” based on exclusive interviews, never-before-seen personal papers, and years of research, her extraordinary career is explored for the first time.
I give The Editor five out of five stars!
Happy Reading!
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