‘The Editor: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America’
By Sara B. Franklin
Atria Books, 316 pages

Judith Jones spent more than 50 years at Alfred A. Knopf, working her way up from a job as a secretary wading through slush piles of unwanted books to discovering “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl,” which launched her career as the editor not only of many literary giants but of celebrated cookbooks, and a variety of projects that catered to and created contemporary taste.

What motivated Jones can be glimpsed in a letter to poet Theodore Roethke in which she described a “dreadful weekend” on Long Island that threw her into a “fit of rage to see how ignorant and appallingly dull the young well-bred could be.” Jones was romantically involved with Roethke, and their intimacy primed her to spot in Sylvia Plath a potential that other American publishers had missed, even though her first book, “The Colossus,” had been published in England.

Jones already had the experience and confidence to tell Plath that some of her poems sounded so much like Roethke that they were practically plagiarized, yet much of “The Colossus” was “remarkably fresh and exciting and vigorous.” She cannily pointed out to Plath that by excising certain poems she would prevent critics from pouncing on the derivative ones.

Plath took criticism well from those she trusted — like her husband, poet Ted Hughes, and the critic Al Alvarez — and in Jones she found a kindred spirit. The back and forth between poet and editor is wonderful to behold in Sara B. Franklin’s narrative, which now reveals in remarkable detail why Jones was in such a good position to advise Plath about poems that had snuck through in the English edition but which Plath was now prepared to jettison.

As Ms. Franklin shows, Jones had the intellect and the passion that made writers like John Updike trust her: “Updike’s candor appealed to Judith’s sensual nature, her mischievous side, and her reluctance to play it safe. Updike welcomed his editor’s deep involvement; for him, the more hands-on her approach, the better. As such, Updike took up a great deal of Judith’s time.”

Writers with reputations to hone (Updike had already won a National Book Award for one of his novels, “The Centaur”) were often treated gingerly, but Jones pushed Updike beyond what he thought appropriate when she insisted he do an interview with Vogue, which he had deemed too glossy, too fashionable, for the gravitas of a serious novelist.

It is not too much to say that Updike conceded to the Vogue interview because Jones was relentless. He thought he had meticulously planned out every production detail of his books, and then she would send him “second, even third rounds of additional notes and revised ideas.” Does that level of care even exist anymore in trade book publishing?

Like Plath, Updike thrived on Jones’s regimen, even while Knopf got a “little annoyed” with Jones, who stood up to Knopf, saying: “He’s already left one publisher” who “tried to tell him what to do and he wasn’t happy.” In effect, Jones implied, if they wanted to keep Updike, they’d better listen to her. 

Editors come and go at major trade houses. It is such a common practice that several of the acquiring editors of my biographies have been fired or moved on to other publishers before the completion of my books, which, in the words of the trade, became orphaned. The kind of momentum that authors like Updike and editors like Jones were able to build up over decades is a very rare occurrence nowadays.

So please read “The Editor,” which benefits from in-depth interviews with Jones, and learn how it was done once upon a time in the life of an editor who withstood the corporate, institutionalized ethos of contemporary trade houses — like Knopf, for example, which is in the process of gutting a good deal of the legacy, and the memory of what publishing was, and that has been recovered in Ms. Franklin’s biography. 

Mr. Rollyson’s orphaned biographies include “Nothing Ever Happens to the Brave: The Life of Martha Gellhorn,” “Rebecca West: A Life,” and “American Isis: The Life and Art of Sylvia Plath.”