The World She Edited

Katharine S. White at The New Yorker

By: Amy Reading

Narrated by: Christa Lewis

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award

""Meticulously researched."" —The New York Times

""A first-rate biography."" —Washington Post

A lively and intimate biography of trailblazing and era-defining New Yorker editor Katharine S. White, who helped build the magazine’s prestigious legacy and transform the 20th century literary landscape for women.

In the summer of 1925, Katharine Sergeant Angell White walked into The New Yorker’s midtown office and left with a job as an editor. The magazine was only a few months old. Over the next thirty-six years, White would transform the publication into a literary powerhouse.

This exquisite biography brings to life the remarkable relationships White fostered with her writers and how these relationships nurtured an astonishing array of literary talent. She edited a young John Updike, to whom she sent seventeen rejections before a single acceptance, as well as Vladimir Nabokov, with whom she fought incessantly, urging that he drop needlessly obscure, confusing words.

White’s biggest contribution, however, was her cultivation of women writers whose careers were made at The New Yorker—Janet Flanner, Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Bishop, Jean Stafford, Nadine Gordimer, Elizabeth Taylor, Emily Hahn, Kay Boyle, and more. She cleared their mental and financial obstacles, introduced them to each other, and helped them create now classic stories and essays. She propelled these women to great literary heights and, in the process, reinvented the role of the editor, transforming the relationship to be not just a way to improve a writer’s work but also their life.

Based on years of scrupulous research, acclaimed author Amy Reading creates a rare and deeply intimate portrait of a prolific editor—through both her incredible tenure at The New Yorker, and her famous marriage to E.B. White—and reveals how she transformed our understanding of literary culture and community.

“The next best thing to cocktails at the Algonquin.” — Heather Clark, author of Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

A woman of great intellect, care, privilege and incredible drive for perfection.

While extraordinarily long, I found this biography, fascinating, and illuminating. While a woman of great privilege who could’ve raised children and had her farm and gardens, I appreciated so much they exacting and detailed research that gave us a real glimpse into a woman’s life in the early 20th centurywill be became a model for feminism while remaining in herself very Victorian. Thank you.

New Yorker

It was very interesting to me to read about the iconic magazine and the person who really made it run the power of a woman in those early days

A deep dive into a literary life

I loved learning so much about a women so tightly woven into the fabric of late 20th century writing. How did I not know she existed before this book? This biography is long on details, which I appreciated after getting into it. It would be fun to see a fictionalized version of her life and the characters at the New Yorker at that time— please write that next!

Speaking of editing....

....this book could have been condensed by at least 20 ir 25%.
I enjoyed hearing the "minutiae" of Katherine White's earliest years of life-- it provided a lot of understanding for how she became the excruciatingly detailed person she was, in both her business and personal life. She begsn working as an editor at The New Yorker magazine in the first year of its publication, 1925. Her special skills were in HOW she communicated with the writers who sumitted short stories, columns, and poetry for publication, how she gently "coaxed" the finest results from them and from the two owners as well. While all this business was going on, she also raised children and grandchildren, divorced her first husband and married E.B. White (of Charlotte's Web fame).
Lots of the details in this book seen excessive, unneeded, ostentatious, but I guess if you're reading about the glamorous arts and entertainment world of New York City in the first half of the 20th century, you've got to expect some name-dropping.

terrible reader. AI reader. want my money back

AI reader. I have purchased many audio books. This was the worst. AI narrator. I want my money back.