Background
Maxwell Perkins was born on September 20, 1884, in New York City. He grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey.
( "A treasure for anyone interested in how Max Perkins ea...)
"A treasure for anyone interested in how Max Perkins earned his reputation as the most gifted editor of all time by his sheer talent for friendship, encouragement, and sound judgment mixed with humor and tact. It equally reveals the grit and wit of his Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Their lively letters offer rare and engaging glimpses into the anatomy--and alchemy--of a bestseller and masterpiece."--Charles Scribner III "What a pleasure to read such gracious, literate, intimate and affectionate correspondence between an editor and an author. This, one can't help feeling, is the way it ought to be."--Michael Korda, author of Another Life "A wonderful illustration of the special relationship between author and editor that even today still lies at the heart of publishing. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was a strong and valiant character, a major talent with all the doubts and difficulties that go along with it. In Max Perkins she found a receptive spirit whose good counsel engendered confidence and abiding trust; over time, a deep friendship evolved. Watching the delicate, enduring organism of their partnership grow is both heartening and inspiring."--Jonathan Galassi, Farrar, Straus & Giroux This compelling collection of letters brings together for the first time the entire known correspondence--nearly 700 letters, notes, and wires--of the preeminent 20th-century American editor and his Pulitzer Prize-winning author. While the letters reveal an intimate portrait of the literary and personal friendship of Maxwell Perkins and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, they also constitute a remarkable history of the Scribner publishing house from 1930 to 1947, when Perkins died. Rawlings, awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1939 for The Yearling, was one of Scribner's stars in an era when publishing was difficult for women writers. Perkins was her champion, offering editorial opinion, a week-by-week critique of her work, and candid gossip about other writers he nurtured, most notably Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas Wolfe. Perkins and Rawlings brought magic to their correspondence. Though four years passed before they used each others first name, their attraction was immediate and mutual: they shared a sense of humor, concerns about health, discreet details about their marriages, a weakness for the bottle, and, at times, agonizing fits of despair. She sent him oranges from her citrus grove in north central Florida; he mailed her a steady supply of the stimulating nonfiction she loved to read while writing novels. Rawlings wrote not just to Perkins but for him. He responded--to both her life and her work--with wisdom, clarity, and generosity. The correspondence of these two superb letter writers presents an eloquent artifact of a rare literary partnership. Rodger L. Tarr, University Distinguished Professor at Illinois State University, is the editor of Short Stories by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (UPF, 1994), Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: A Descriptive Bibliography (Pittsburgh, 1996), and Poems by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: Songs of a Housewife (UPF, 1997).
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(First edition. Letters to Hemingway, Wolfe, Fitzgerald, e...)
First edition. Letters to Hemingway, Wolfe, Fitzgerald, etc. Jacket worn with pieces missing. xv, 312 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. 8vo..
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005VR5M/?tag=2022091-20
Maxwell Perkins was born on September 20, 1884, in New York City. He grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey.
Perkins attended St. Paul's Academy in Concord, New Hampshire and graduated from Harvard College in 1907. Although an economics major in college, Perkins had the good sense to also study under Charles Townsend Copeland, a famous teacher of literature who helped prepare Perkins for his calling.
Perkins joined the venerable publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons in 1910, after working as a reporter for The New York Times.
At the time he joined it, Scribner's was known for publishing eminently respectable authors such as John Galsworthy, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. However, much as he admired these older giants, Perkins wished to bring Scribner's into the 20th century by publishing younger writers.
Unlike most editors, he actively sought out promising new artists and made his first big find in 1919 when he signed F. Scott Fitzgerald. This was no easy task, for no one at Scribner's except Perkins had liked The Romantic Egotist, the working title of Fitzgerald's first novel, and it was rejected. Even so, Perkins worked with Fitzgerald to drastically revise the manuscript and then lobbied it through the house until he wore down his colleagues' resistance.
The publication of This Side of Paradise (1920) marked the arrival of a new literary generation that would always be associated with Perkins. Fitzgerald's profligacy and alcoholism put great strain on his relationship with Perkins. Nonetheless, Perkins remained his friend as well as his editor to the end of Fitzgerald's too-short life, advancing him money, making personal loans, and encouraging the unstable genius in every way.
Perkins rendered yeoman service as an editor too, particularly in helping Fitzgerald with The Great Gatsby (1925), his masterpiece, which benefitted substantially from Perkins' criticism.
It was through Fitzgerald that Perkins met Ernest Hemingway, publishing his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, in 1926. A daring book for the times, Perkins had to fight for it over objections to Hemingway's profanity raised by traditionalists in the firm.
The commercial success of Hemingway's next novel, A Farewell to Arms (1929), which rose to number one on the best-seller list, put an end to questions about Perkins' editorial judgment.
The greatest professional challenge Perkins ever faced was posed by Thomas Wolfe, whose talent was matched only by his lack of artistic self-discipline. Unlike most writers, who are often blocked, words poured out of Wolfe like a mighty Niagara. A blessing in some ways, this was a curse too, as Wolfe's affection for each and every one of his sentences was boundless.
After a tremendous struggle, Perkins induced Wolfe to cut 90, 000 words from his first novel, Look Homeward Angel (1929). His next, Of Time and the River (1935), was the result of a two-year battle during which Wolfe kept writing more and more pages in the face of an ultimately victorious effort by Perkins to hold the line on size.
Grateful to Perkins at first for discovering him and helping him realize his potential, Wolfe later came to resent the popular perception that he owed his success to his editor. This was true in part, for without Perkins' firm hand it is unlikely that Wolfe could have been published. Wolfe left Scribner's after provoking numerous fights with Perkins to justify his departure. This ingratitude hurt Perkins, but did not keep him from serving selflessly as Wolfe's literary executor after his untimely death in 1938.
Although his reputation as an editor is most closely linked to these three, Perkins worked with many other writers. He was the first to publish J. P. Marquand and Erskine Caldwell. His advice was responsible for the enormous success of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, whose The Yearling (1938) grew out of suggestions made by Perkins. It became a runaway best-seller and won the Pulitzer Prize.
Alan Paton's Cry the Beloved Country (1946) was another highly successful Perkins book. His last discovery was James Jones, who approached Perkins in 1945. Perkins persuaded Jones to abandon the novel he was working on at that time and launched him on what would become From Here to Eternity (1951).
Among his gifts, two in particular stand out. He recognized good writing wherever he found it and nursed along writers as few editors did.
That Ring Lardner has a reputation today, for example, is owing to the fact that Perkins saw him as more than a syndicated humorist. Perkins believed in Lardner more than the writer did in himself, and despite the failure of several earlier collections he coaxed Lardner into letting him assemble another under the title How To Write Short Stories (1924). The book sold well and, thanks to excellent reviews, established Lardner as a literary figure.
Apart from his roles as coach, friend, and promoter, Perkins was unusual among editors for the close and detailed attention he gave to books, and for what the novelist Vance Bourjaily, another of his discoveries, called his "infallible sense of structure. " Although he never pretended to be an artist himself, Perkins could often see where an author ought to go more clearly than the writer did. That was true even of Fitzgerald, whose craftsmanship was exemplary. For this, and for his nurturing of talent, American literature is much in his debt.
In 1946 Perkins' health was failing and he did not live to see its success, nor that of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea (1952), which was dedicated to his memory.
Perkins died on June 17, 1947 in Stamford, Connecticut.
( "A treasure for anyone interested in how Max Perkins ea...)
(First edition. Letters to Hemingway, Wolfe, Fitzgerald, e...)
Perkins was noted for his courtesy and thoughtfulness, which, though justly admired, are not what made him great.
In 1910 Perkins married Louise Saunders, who would bear him five daughters.