The World She Edited

Description

The World She Edited
by Amy Reading

ISBN: 9781328595911
Hardcover, new

Brief Description:
A lively and intimate biography of trailblazing and era-defining New Yorker
editor Katharine S. White, who helped build the magazine’s prestigious
legacy and transform the 20th century literary landscape for women. In the
summer of 1925, Katharine Sergeant Angell White walked into The New
Yorker’s midtown office and left with a job as an editor. The magazine was
only a few months old. Over the next thirty-six years, White would
transform the publication into a literary powerhouse. This exquisite
biography brings to life the remarkable relationships White fostered with
her writers and how these relationships nurtured an astonishing array of
literary talent. She edited a young John Updike, to whom she sent seventeen
rejections before a single acceptance, as well as Vladimir Nabokov, with
whom she fought incessantly, urging that he drop needlessly obscure,
confusing words. White’s biggest contribution, however, was her cultivation
of women writers whose careers were made at The New Yorker–Janet Flanner,
Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Bishop, Jean Stafford, Nadine Gordimer, Elizabeth
Taylor, Emily Hahn, Kay Boyle, and more. She cleared their mental and
financial obstacles, introduced them to each other, and helped them create
now classic stories and essays. She propelled these women to great literary
heights and, in the process, reinvented the role of the editor,
transforming the relationship to be not just a way to improve a writer’s
work but also their life. Based on years of scrupulous research, acclaimed
author Amy Reading creates a rare and deeply intimate portrait of a
prolific editor–through both her incredible tenure at The New Yorker, and
her famous marriage to E.B. White–and reveals how she transformed our
understanding of literary culture and community.