Amy Reading celebrates the life and legacy of New Yorker editor Katharine S. White.

On this episode of Fully Booked, Amy Reading joins us to discuss The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker (Mariner Books, Sept. 3), a sophisticated biography of an influential editor who helped mold a fledgling humor magazine into a cultural juggernaut. In a starred review, Kirkus calls The World She Edited, “an entertaining and expansive study of a pioneering literary editor and the era that shaped her legendary tenure.

Reading, a writer of narrative history and biography, is the author of The Mark Inside: A Perfect Swindle, a Cunning Revenge, and a Small History of the Big Con(2012). She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University and has received fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities and the New York Public Library. She lives in upstate New York with her husband and two children.

Here’s a bit more from our starred review of The World She Edited: “The storied origins of the New Yorker, established in 1925 by Harold Ross, have been extensively chronicled, including by several books delving into the lives of its idiosyncratic editors.…In this captivating new biography, Reading, author of The Mark Inside, finally shines a well-deserved spotlight on White’s remarkable career, portraying her as a modern woman whose early feminist roots traced to her college years at Bryn Mawr. White’s keen instinct for talent, discovery of several women writers and others at the start of their careers (Kay Boyle, Janet Flanner, and Elizabeth Bishop, among others), and profound understanding of the marketplace and educated women’s evolving roles distinguished the magazine for decades.…White’s personal life was equally fascinating and progressive, as revealed through Reading’s nuanced, discerning portrait of the disintegration of her 14-year marriage to Ernest Angell (parent to esteemed New Yorker writer Roger Angell) and the ludicrous hurdles to divorce she confronted. Her subsequent marriage to E.B. White, one of her staff writers and seven years her junior, would endure for the next 48 years, and Reading’s portrayal of E.B. is additionally compelling.”

Reading tells me why she chose to foreground the author-editor relationship in writing about White’s life. We discuss several of the writers with whom White worked closely, including Frances Gray Patton, Jean Stafford, and E.B. White; and how White mentored, praised, and often introduced these writers to one another. We talk about why people don’t know more about White’s life; the word formidable, as applied to White throughout her career; and what her youth was like. Reading notes that almost every source for the biography came annotated by White, a prodigious record-keeper. We ponder what White might make of magazine journalism in the modern era (including Slack); and Reading talks about the special connection she forged with Roger Angell while working on the book. We close by considering whether editing is an artform, and what White might have said on the matter.

Then editors Laura Simeon, Mahnaz Dar, John McMurtrie, and Laurie Muchnick share their top picks in books for the week.

EDITORS’ PICKS:

All the Ways To Go by Jessie Janowitz (Sourcebooks Young Readers)

Stella & Marigold by Annie Barrows, illus. by Sophie Blackall (Chronicle Books)

Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love by Julie Sedivy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich (Harper/HarperCollins)

THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS:

Marvelous Jackson by Laura Anne Bird

Doreen by Doreen by Jo Ferrone

Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.