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Katharine S. White
by Amy Reading
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.
"Captivating…An entertaining and expansive study of a pioneering literary editor and the era that shaped her legendary tenure….Reading finally shines a well-deserved spotlight on White's remarkable career." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"With profound understanding of and appreciation for the full extent of White's achievements, Reading's in-depth, ardently and expertly written biography is a literary landmark." —Booklist (starred review)
"Penetrating...Reading convincingly portrays White as a feminist pioneer who built a career in which she embodied the urbane, ambitious women who read the New Yorker and populated its fiction. The prose is lucid and elegant, evoking the style White infused into the magazine...The result is a fine portrait of one of the New Yorker's leading lights that nails the magazine's hothouse sensibility." —Publishers Weekly
"Some people like to curl up with a cozy mystery, while for others, the ultimate cozy involves midcentury literary Manhattan. Amy Reading—whose bona fides include service on the executive board of cooperative indie bookstore Buffalo Street Books in Ithaca, N.Y.—profiles New Yorker editor Katharine S. White, who came on board at the magazine in 1925 and spent 36 years editing the likes of Elizabeth Bishop, Janet Flanner, and Mary McCarthy. Put the kettle on—or better yet, pour a classic gin martini—in preparation for this one, which underscores the many women authors White championed." —The Millions
"Amy Reading has recreated a lost, gilded literary world in her smart and evocative biography of Katharine White, the longtime editor at The New Yorker who helped shape postwar American literature. One finishes this book with enormous gratitude for Katharine White's quiet but fierce commitment to reading, writing, and women, and for Amy Reading's determination to recognize White's achievement. Gratitude, too, for all the drama, humor, and literary gossip that make The World She Edited the next best thing to cocktails at the Algonquin." —Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
"The World She Edited, Amy Reading's stunning new biography of the New Yorker's least lauded but arguably most consequential editor, Katharine S. White, is both revealing and revelatory....With delicacy and insight, Reading opens a closely guarded personal life to empathic scrutiny, while proving definitively that White's was nothing short of a brilliant career." —Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast
"Reading harnesses years of deep research, granular attention, and a refreshingly critical eye to examine the life of Katharine S. White, renowned editor of The New Yorker. In detailing White's immense talent, fastidiousness, rigor, and, perhaps most groundbreakingly and movingly of all, her deep relational acuity, Reading reveals White's tremendous savvy—and, equally, her sacrifice—in choosing to exercise her power from the wings rather than center stage. Reading reminds us to pull back the curtain and look carefully at who, and what, is behind the stories that shape us all. A thorough, nuanced, and deeply human excavation of an extraordinary life." —Sara B. Franklin, author of The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America
This information about The World She Edited was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Julie Prisloe
Amy Reading holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. She lives in upstate New York with her husband and two children. The Mark Inside was published by Knopf in March 2012.
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