Background
Avis MacVicar DeVoto was born in Houghton, Michigan, on May 22, 1904.
Avis MacVicar DeVoto was born in Houghton, Michigan, on May 22, 1904.
She attended Northwestern University and at the end of her freshman year in 1923, she married American historian Bernard DeVoto, who had been her English instructor.
She was highly influential in editing and guiding two famous cookbooks to publication: Julia Child"s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and British food writer Elizabeth David"s Italian Food. The DeVotos remained in Evanston for four years and then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Bernard taught English at Harvard University until 1936. The DeVotos lived in Cambridge for the majority of their lives together.
They had two sons, Gordon (d 2009,) an amateur writer, and Mark, a music theorist and composer who taught at Tufts University.
In 1952, DeVoto received a letter from Julia Child, at that time living in Paris, responding to one of Bernard’s recent magazine columns on kitchen knives. DeVoto’s reply to the letter initiated the correspondence and lifelong friendship between the two women.
DeVoto served as an early reader and editor for Child’s forthcoming cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and her editorial connections would help Child and her co-authors Louise Bertholle and Simone Beck sign a contract with Houghton Mifflin in 1954. When the publishing company rejected the book, DeVoto helped push for the book’s publication by Alfred A. Knopf.
After Bernard DeVoto’s sudden death in 1955, Avis DeVoto worked as a cookbook scout and editor for Knopf from 1956–1958.
She later became House Secretary for Lowell House at Harvard from 1958 to 1963 and worked in the Deans’ Office at Radcliffe College until her retirement in 1969. During this time she also continued to edit and read manuscripts for Houghton Mifflin. DeVoto died of pancreatic cancer in 1989.
Actress Deborah Rush played DeVoto in the film Julie & Julia with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams.