The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker

"Wow, this is a book that, if you like The New Yorker you really should read. It’s basically the story of how the New Yorker blew up into a major influence in literature and a cultural treasure in general. Katharine White was from an upper-class family, went to Bryn Mawr, one of the ‘Seven Sister’ colleges—the women’s version of the Ivy Leagues—and got married young. But somehow she walked into this job. Harold Ross, the then-editor of The New Yorker, hired her as a manuscript reader five months after the magazine was founded, and she succeeded so well in this male-dominated world that within a year or two she was what amounted to the executive editor. She was incredibly influential, and shaped the magazine as a home for great writers, all while juggling a very complicated personal life. She divorced her first husband, with whom she had a child. Then she married E.B. White, a writer everyone knows as the author of Charlotte’s Web but who was an amazing New Yorker writer in his own right. So she really knew complicated writers from the inside out. As a freelancer, you will be astonished at how much care White took with her writers. She supported them, wrote them letters, found them agents, tided them over when they didn’t have money. Even her rejection letters were scrupulously detailed. That’s how she managed to bring on so many amazing writers, from Mary McCarthy to Vladimir Nabokov to John Updike. She turned the New Yorker from a comedic rag to the place you wanted to be published as a writer in America in the 20th century. Have you ever been treated that way? I have not. And I was an editor myself for a long time and tried to be that kind of editor, but you get overwhelmed with everything. It’s really great to see that these writers got that kind of support. Optimistic, yes, in the sense that people are trying out a lot of different forms and going after subjects that, 30 years ago, I seriously doubt anybody would have taken on. Candy Darling, for example. One dilemma I see, and that we talked about in the committee, is that biographies are very labour and time intensive. So by definition the people who end up writing them are people who have some other means of support—whether they are academics or have their own money. In a sense, it restricts who can write biography. But I think the field recognises that and is trying to figure out a way to address that. It’s definitely something that needs work."