Judith Jones had the hands of a cook. She was never one to fuss over her looks—her slender frame, straight hair, and even straighter posture expressed a New England rectitude—but her hands, nonetheless, were a tell: slightly weathered, with nails unpolished, these were the hands of someone who sliced onions, kneaded bread, shredded pork, and cleaned fish.
That these hands also took a pen (always green) to the manuscripts of some of the best writers of our day spoke to the wide-ranging skills of one of America’s most modest yet accomplished book editors. As Sonny Mehta, Knopf’s longtime editor-in-chief after Robert Gottlieb departed in 1987 for The New Yorker, said, “Judith was the most civilized person in publishing.”
She was accommodating—John Updike chose the typeface for his books and designed the jackets; playful—Jim Beard admired her spunk; maternal—guiding Anna Thomas in the crafting of her 1970s best-seller, The Vegetarian Epicure (although she forbade Thomas the use of powdered garlic); stern—a necessity with Marcella Hazan; gentle—with gifted writers Anne Tyler and M. F. K. Fisher; protective—of the beloved Edna Lewis; and resolute—when shaping Julia Child into America’s most trusted home cook. In The Editor, Sara B. Franklin, a culinary historian and Judith’s late-in-life confidante, aims high in crafting a biography of this remarkable woman.
It is no easy task. Over a career of some 50 years at the distinguished house of Alfred A. Knopf, beginning in 1957 and until her retirement at the age of 87, in 2011, Judith Jones went from playing second fiddle to the imperious Blanche Knopf, ignoring the incipient sexism in publishing (men were editors, women were secretaries), to attaining the respect and stature she deserved.
As Franklin tells it, Judith at her core was a rebel spirit chafing at her Upper East Side, Gentile upbringing. There was her first love and long-term affair with Theodore Roethke, her professor at Bennington College, whose manic moods eventually wore her down; meeting newspaperman Evan Jones while working in Paris after college, falling in love, marrying, and returning to the States; and her perspicacity at the age of 26 in plucking The Diary of Anne Frank out of the slush pile while working for Francis K. Price in Doubleday’s Paris office. He took all the credit when the book was published in the U.S. in June 1952; Judith got none until decades later. (As of today, The Diary of Anne Frank has sold in excess of 30 million copies.)
Judith didn’t keep quiet about her editorial successes because she was shy; she simply didn’t feel a need to grandstand. That she swam in the buff most of her adult life, according to Franklin, in the pond at her Vermont home was further proof of her Yankee spirit. (I knew that spirit firsthand, having been Judith’s editorial assistant for four years, beginning around 1980.)
If there was a watershed period, it was undeniably from about 1959 to 1964. During these years, Judith was working with John Updike on the Rabbit books, William Maxwell (also Updike’s editor at The New Yorker), Langston Hughes, John Hersey, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Tyler, who was just 21 when her first novel, If Morning Ever Comes, was submitted to Judith and accepted. Plath was the streaky writer of the bunch—Judith published Colossus, her first book of poems, but felt compelled to pass on The Bell Jar, Plath’s veiled, semi-autobiographical novel.
And then, of course, there was Julia Child, who in a matter of years came to be known to one and all simply as “Julia,” or, as Time magazine anointed her, “Our Lady of the Ladle.” In 1959, when “French Recipes for American Cooks” landed on Judith’s desk, the 750-page manuscript had gone through a decade of revisions at Houghton Mifflin. Reluctantly, the Boston publisher had let it go. But Judith recognized in it the teaching book she instinctively knew American cooks needed.
It was not an easy sell inside the house, beginning with Blanche Knopf, who was characteristically disdainful. Undeterred, Judith marshaled her allies in the house, remained steadfast, and in the end made cooking history. (The advance in 1960 was $1,500, some $15,000 today.)
Its new title, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, told you everything, as did the range and depth of the contents: this was about mastering a cuisine, with reliable, step-by-step instructions. Yes, it was French, but it was about good cooking—the best cooking, really—to be made at home. Herein the foundation for Judith’s lifelong philosophy about cookbooks was set: recipes needed to work for home cooks.
Franklin is at her best in describing the many cooks and food that Judith, who died in 2017, championed over the years. Not only did she have Judith’s reminiscences to humanize the story, but she also had access to decades of correspondence and related papers, a biographer’s dream trove. (Regrettably, the cliché-heavy narrative would have been improved with a more attentive editor.)
During one of their last talks, Judith told Franklin, “I’m not that impressed with myself.” Fortunately for us, Franklin ignored that, and in so doing has given us a book with recitations of great accomplishments, but, more important, a book with heart.
Ruth Peltason is a New York–based editor, writer, and jewelry authority. Her new book, The Art of David Webb, is out now from Rizzoli