The editor How publishing legend Judith Jones shaped culture in America

Editors ply their little-understood art behind the scenes and are rarely celebrated beyond grateful author acknowledgements. Franklin vividly brings Judith Jones forward as a literary and cultural visionary of remarkable spirit and skill. Born in New York in 1924, Jones shrugged off stifling family and social expectations, following her love for books to Bennington College, an affair with poet and teacher Theodore Roethke, and a move to Paris, where she partied with literary expats, learned to cook French cuisine, roomed with a bunch of guys, and worked for Doubleday (where she interned as a student), rescuing The Diary of Anne Frank from the reject pile. She also fell in love with journalist Dick Jones. They returned to the states, and she landed at Knopf. There, for 50 years, she worked with such exceptional talents as John Updike, Anne Tyler, and Sharon Olds and launched a revolution in cookbook publishing, recruiting Julia Child, Edna Lewis, Madhur Jaffrey, and many more to create finely written, expertly tested (often by Jones herself), and inspiring volumes. Franklin incisively chronicles the tremendous efforts Jones undertook to champion her writers and their books, remaining "lithe and vigorous" as she worked into her eighties. Jones is an exhilarating subject, and Franklin has done her justice in this expert, involving, and radiant biography.

In the introduction to this intimate and illuminating biography, Franklin (coauthor of The Phoenicia Diner) writes that editors "must, at once, remain laser focused on their writers' specific needs, while keeping abreast of shifts in the culture at large." In that spirit, Franklin documents the life and career of Knopf editor Judith Jones (1924--2017)--who edited and/or championed such household names as Sylvia Plath, John Updike, Julia Child, James Beard, and Anne Frank--while depicting what publishing was like for women from the 1950s to the early 2000s. A self-described "adventurous girl," Jones began her career at Doubleday and spent more than 50 years at Knopf; developed her love of French cooking while living in Paris, where she met her husband, food writer Richard Evan Jones; and had a knack for spotting shifts in the zeitgeist, leading her to become an early publisher of books on vegetarian cooking, organic gardening, and "ethnic" food. Franklin also spotlights the demands placed on working moms like Jones and many of her authors, and takes brief, revelatory sojourns into those writers' lives, including a stirring section on Black chef Edna Lewis, who was raised in a town founded by formerly enslaved Americans. The result is an exceptional feast for bibliophiles and foodies alike. Agent: Kari Stuart, ICM Partners. (May)

A deep dive into the life and work of preeminent book editor Judith Jones (1924-2017). "This book is my attempt to give the editor, the woman, her due," writes Franklin, a professor of food culture and history at NYU's Gallatin School. Over months of interviews in 2013, Jones offered reflections and insights--e.g., "the most important quality for an editor, a sensitive editor, is diplomacy"; "You have to get the writer to see what I might think is wrong…and then it comes from them." Jones started in publishing as a 17-year-old editorial intern in 1942; over her career, she left an indelible mark, by editing a litany of formidable writers, and forged pathways for women. Renowned for fishing The Diary of Anne Frank from the rejection pile at Doubleday ("she told her boss, 'We have to publish this book,' who "asked incredulously, 'What, that book by that kid?'"), Jones also fought for Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, after it had been turned down several times. Even after years at Knopf, she wasn't invited to acquire on her own or even included in editorial meetings; for a duration, "everyone's office had a window except Judith's." She told Franklin, "People just perceived me as more of a secretary. That's the word they would use." Jones began to build her list with Sylvia Plath and Child, "low-profile authors whose work, in poetry and food, respectively, existed outside the literary mainstream." Over the course of her tenure, she edited John Updike, Langston Hughes, Anne Tyler, and many others. Of Jones and her cookbook authors, the author writes, "Their collective, alternative approach to womanhood and care work permeated American culture." Franklin lionizes her subject yet includes Jones' admission of mistakes--notably, passing on Plath's The Bell Jar. Sometimes heavy with dry details, but a thorough and humanizing portrait. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.