The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America
Sara B. Franklin
Atria Books, 2024, $29.99
As I read The Editor, it dawned on me that I’d been living with its subject, Judith Jones, for decades—in the form of tattered and stained cookbooks by Marcella Hazan and Julia Child, which Jones had edited. I’d also been cooking and eating her writers’ recipes for my whole life, as my mother had consulted copies of cookbooks by James Beard, Craig Claiborne, and other chefs in Jones’s stable of chef/authors at Knopf. In fact, as I finished the biography by Kingston resident Sara B. Franklin, I planned on following Hazan’s recipe for pesto to make from the high summer crop of basil from our garden, which was superb.
Such is the role of an editor like Jones (1924-2017)—integral to authors’ texts by invisibly shaping, trimming, and clarifying their vision so readers can readily access it. Before that, much groundwork is required by editors in order to identify an author’s potential in terms of their talent, vision, the publisher’s mission, and public appetite. Franklin’s biography of Jones lucidly, and in captivating detail, traces the editor’s impressive life and output.
The Editor reads more like a novel than biography. This helps to unspool Jones’ story in an even more cinematic manner than it actually was, which isn’t to say it was quotidian. Jones was raised in New York City, went to Bennington, and worked at Doubleday during and after college. She fell in love with poet Theodore Roethke, a professor at Bennington, whose prose she would edit after their on-again, off-again relationship finally ended.
After burning out at Doubleday, Jones spent time living in Paris, where she learned about French cuisine. To make money, she and a friend ran a clandestine dinner club in the fancy apartment of her partner’s vacationing relative, who happened to be a princess. After the royal discovered the ruse and shut it down, Jones worked as a secretary at The Weekend (a glossy published by the US military) where she met her eventual husband, the editor Dick Jones. After The Weekend folded, she was hired to run the new Paris office of her previous employer Doubleday, where she rescued The Diary of Anne Frank from the slush pile. Eventually, 30 million copies would be printed. Jones received little recognition for her coup, and was perpetually undervalued for early achievements.
After a spell in New Hampshire, Jones was hired by Blanche Knopf as a “lady editor” at Knopf, a rarity in the male-dominated field. With her keen eye and intellect, Jones edited authors such as Elizabeth Bowen, Langston Hughes, Anne Tyler, and John Updike. She was passed an unwieldy 750-page cookbook manuscript by Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck, and Julia Child. Jones’s personal experience in Paris, shopping and cooking with great pleasure, provided her insight with which to evaluate the recipes. She rewrote many for clarity and ease of use. The multiyear project, after much tinkering, became Mastering the Art of French Cooking, published in 1961. Childs’s TV appearances promoting the book would be parlayed into her legendary series, “The French Chef.”
She and Dick took on the sudden responsibility of raising her late cousin’s two teens after their father had a stroke. Jones was working with young poet Sylvia Plath, editing the American publication of The Colossus, poems already released abroad. Plath completed her novel The Bell Jar, which Knopf rejected at Jones’s recommendation. It was a rare missed opportunity, as Jones went on to edit an illustrious roster of fiction, poetry, and cookbook authors. The latter included Edna Lewis (Southern), Madhur Jaffrey (Indian), Irene Kuo (Chinese), and Lidia Bastianich (Italian).
Together in Vermont, the Joneses wrote The Book of Bread, and after Dick’s death, Judith penned a memoir, The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food while continuing a regimen of yoga and swimming. She was honored with a James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006. But there is no higher accolade than the quiet presence of her life’s work on every household’s bookshelf. Franklin, in flowing, legible prose, provides a poetic tribute to Jones’ legacy.
This article appears in August 2024.
