Katharine S. White played a major part in shaping Harold Ross' vision for The New Yorker.
One of the first employees of the magazine after its founding in 1925, White added urban sophistication and literary ambition to Ross' idea of a racy Jazz Age trumpet blast.
White executed the details of Ross' editorial genius, yet her contribution has been slighted with more credit given James Thurber, William Shawn and her husband, E.B. White.
The longtime New Yorker fiction editor receives long overdue recognition with the publication of author Amy Reading's new biography, "The World She Edited: Kartharine White at the New Yorker."
White's purview at the magazine extended beyond her duties as fiction editor, expanding into poetry, humor pieces and the Talk of the Town essays at the front of the publication.
Under her guidance, serious short stories defined the magazine as much as its famous cartoons. Along with her protege William Maxwell, she developed the careers of John Updike, Vladimir Nabokov, John O'Hara, John Cheever, Peter Taylor, Jean Stafford, Nadine Gordimer, Mary McCarthy, Mavis Gallant and others
The mother of longtime New Yorker writer and editor Roger Angell, White retired in 1961 to a home in rural Maine with her husband, whose career flourished as the author of the children's novels "Charlotte's Web" and "Stuart Little" and as a revered essayist for the New Yorker and other magazines.
Katharine White now receives her due as a great American editor.
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