THE EDITOR: Judith Jones, June 10, 2024, 7 PM Zoom

Culinary Historians of Chicago

THE EDITOR: How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America 


By Sara B. Franklin

Come join us as food historian and author Sara Franklin gives insight into Judith Jones, the visionary behind some of the most important authors of the 20th century, including Julia Child, Anne Frank, John Updike and Sylvia Plath. This iconic editor finally gets her due in Ms. Franklin’s newly released book, The Editor. 

Ms. Franklin recounts that when Judith Jones began working at Doubleday’s Paris office in 1949, the then twenty-five-year-old spent most of her time wading through manuscripts in the slush pile and passing on projects—until one day, a manuscript caught her eye. She read the book 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 Jones’ culture-defining career in publishing. 

Jones moved to Knopf publishing, and during her more than fifty years at that company, she published the who’s who of food writing, including Edna Lewis, M.F.K. Fisher, Madhur Jaffrey, James Beard, Joan Nathan, and, most famously, Julia Child. Jones helped turn these authors into household names and changed the way Americans think about food, cooking, and culinary diversity. 

Ms. Franklin became friendly with Ms. Jones, conducted numerous interviews with her and studied her personal papers. And now she wants to share the life of one of our country’s most influential tastemakers. 

Biography: 
Sara B. Franklin received a 2020–2021 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) public scholars grant for her research on Judith Jones and teaches courses on food culture, writing, and oral history at NYU’s Gallatin School for Individualized Study and via the NYU Prison Education Initiative at Wallkill Correctional Facility. She is the author of Edna Lewis and The Phoenicia Diner Cookbook. She holds a PhD in food studies from NYU and studied documentary radio and nonfiction at both the Duke Center for Documentary Studies and the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. SaraBFranklin.com.

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Monday, June 10, 2024
7 PM Central Time
via Zoom

If you have any questions or wish for a link,
please e-mail: Culinary.Historians@gmail.com

CulinaryHistorians.org

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rMd-Yj3gM8

Very much enjoyed the presentation. What a remarkable story.

There's a nice review and synopsis -- along with a local connection -- of the book here . . .

The Woman Who Made America Take Cookbooks Seriously

at theatlantic.com, Lily Meyer wrote:In the summer of 1948, a young American, a Bennington College graduate visiting Paris, lost her purse in the Jardin des Tuileries. Inside it were her passport and ticket home. Many travelers in her situation would panic. She decided it was a sign that she wasn’t meant to leave France. She quit her job at Doubleday, then the biggest publisher in New York, and moved into a friend’s aunt’s apartment, where she launched a clandestine supper club to support herself. Perhaps she’d “open a small restaurant,” she wrote to her horrified parents. In another letter, she reassured her father that although she knew she’d made a risky choice, “one has to take chances and there are many advantages to be had. Anyway, I am an adventurous girl.”

That girl was Judith Jones, one of the most important editors in American history. She pulled The Diary of Anne Frank out of a slush pile during her second stint at Doubleday—in Paris this time, in 1949—a discovery for which her male boss took credit. Eight years later, she moved to Knopf, where she worked until 2013, publishing authors such as John Hersey, Sharon Olds, Sylvia Plath, Anne Tyler, and John Updike. She was an avid cook—that supper club of hers was a hit—and, as an editor, single-handedly elevated the cookbook to its contemporary status, working with all-time greats including Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, Madhur Jaffrey, Edna Lewis, Irene Kuo, Claudia Roden, and many, many more.

at the atlantic.com, Lily Meyer wrote:I never met Judith, but my interest in her is personal: My step-grandmother, Abby Mandel, was one of her authors. Around the time Julia Child got famous, Abby was a divorced Jewish mother in greater Chicago. She’d been cooking for her family—siblings first, then children—since age 8, and after recruiting Child to star at a fundraiser she was hosting for her alma mater, Smith College, she grew fascinated by the idea of cooking professionally and moved to Paris for culinary school. After training at La Varenne and in kitchens across Belgium, France, and Switzerland, she returned to Chicago and began writing features and food columns for, among other outlets, the Chicago Tribune and Bon Appétit. Soon enough, those columns turned into cookbooks, edited by Child’s editor at Knopf: Judith.

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