Judith Jones
In the history of American publishing there are three legends: Max Perkins, Robert Gottlieb and Judith Jones.Rising at time when women were relegated to secretarial roles she never let misogyny interfere with her work.
Her discovery of THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK in Paris and pushing for it's American publication while working in Paris for Doubleday was the first in a series of significant achievements.
You might say that she launched the cookbook industry when she bought the manuscript of what became Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child and established the template for PBS cooking shows tied to books.
Other discoveries were Claudia Roden who introduced Middle Eastern Cuisine to America and Madhur Jaffrey who did the same for Indian cuisine.
And if that were not enough she edited everything that John Updike ever wrote.
I had the privilege of meeting Judith who was most kind and gracious in helping me launch the PARIS IN NEW YORK LITERARY FESTIVAL in 2010.
Judith Jones
5 Paris Readers Circle members will win a copy
Legendary editor Judith Jones, the woman behind some of the most important authors of the 20th century--including Julia Child, Anne Frank, Edna Lewis, John Updike, and Sylvia Plath--finally gets her due in this intimate biography.
When twenty-five-year-old Judith Jones began working as a secretary at Doubleday's Paris office in 1949, she spent most of her time wading through manuscripts in the slush pile and passing on projects--until one day, a book caught her eye. She read it in one sitting, then begged her boss to consider publishing it. A year later, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl became a bestseller. It was the start of a culture-defining career in publishing.
During her more than fifty years as an editor at Knopf, Jones nurtured the careers of literary icons such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Tyler, and John Updike, and helped launched new genres and trends in literature.
My Conversation with Judith Jones
Who were your earliest culinary influences?
My Aunt Marian who was married to Uncle Doc. As the most popular GP in their small town he often didn’t get home until 9PM but she always had a hot meal waiting for him. She took great pleasure in cooking and I learned that cooking is an expression of love.
Back at home in Manhattan, Edie, our housekeeper from Barbados introduced me to hot peppers, garlic (my mother hated it) and strange fruits I never heard of. I loved watching her with a big mustard-colored ceramic bowl cradled on her hip as she would beat a batter with her strong brown arm, her wooden spoon hitting the bowl with a plopping sound.
And sensing that I had inherited his food gene my father, almost conspiratorially, would take me to lunch on Saturday to La Petite Maison, a typical French restaurant on the Upper East Side.
Julia Child
Featuring 524 delicious recipes and over 100 instructive illustrations to guide readers every step of the way, Mastering the Art of French Cookingoffers something for everyone, from seasoned experts to beginners who love good food and long to reproduce the savory delights of French cuisine.
Claudia Roden
The definitive volume on Middle Eastern cooking, a modern classic from the award-winning, bestselling author of The Book of Jewish Food and Claudia Roden's Mediterranean
Originally published in 1972 and hailed by James Beard as "a landmark in the field of cookery," this new version represents the accumulation of the author's years of extensive travel throughout the ever-changing landscape of the Middle East, gathering recipes and stories.
Judith was my editor and friend. I had huge admiration and affection for her. We met regularly from the time she took on my first Middle Eastern book soon after it came out in 1968. I stayed with her and Evan in New York and in Vermont (I swam with her in their lake) and she stayed with me in London. I have very fond memories of sitting in the dining room with her and Evan, enjoying the food they cooked together; and when she was on her own of the two of us cooking together and eating on the little round marble table just outside the kitchen with a glass of wine. She had so much style and her cooking was always memorable. We met often in Paris. We saw friends she had known soon after the war when she had met Evan and he was editor of a magazine. We went around exhibitions and to concerts and walked for hours, she in her high heels. We laughed a lot. She had a list of restaurants to explore.
Judith was the best editor in the world and I really mean in the world, bringing out the best in her authors, encouraging and demanding high standards, and for some helping with the writing. My English publisher commissioned my Jewish book then forgot about it and left Judith in America to edit it while I left it on a backburner. Every year she asked how I was getting on. She wanted to know what I was doing, who I was meeting, what I was discovering. When I started, there were no books on the cooking of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews (Jews of Arab lands). It was difficult to research. At first I thought it seemed like an impossible task but I became fascinated and did not want to stop. After fifteen years Judith said “Claudia, give it to me. It’s an Odyssey not an encyclopedia.” When I brought along my pile of papers with recipes and stories, not knowing how to put them together, she spread the papers all over the floor of her office and, taking out each story, said “where shall we put this?”-Claudia Roden
Melissa Clark on Judith Jones
By holding her cookbook authors to the same standards she set for her literary writers like John Updike, treating recipes as cultural touchstones, and viewing authors as experts with specific and important perspectives, she helped define contemporary cookbook editing. And, by publishing a diverse roster of authors, including Madhur Jaffrey, Irene Kuo and Edna Lewis, she shined a light on cuisines and cooks routinely ignored in an age dominated by white home economists and male French chefs. NY Times June 14
Listen to my podcast with Melissa
Readers Comments
That was one hell of a post last week. I’m ready for that trip to Naples right now! It sounds as delicious as it must taste.-Leonard Pitt-Berkeley, CA
I have to run to the gym, I gained about 5 lbs. this morning reading your newsletter about dining in Naples! Anne Pontbary, Paris
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