Robert Giroux, 1914-2008

The publishing world mourns the death of Robert Giroux, who left his position as the executive editor at Harcourt in 1955 to join a house that had been formed less than a decade earlier, Farrar, Straus. His name was appended to the company when he became a partner himself, and FSG has since become a near-certain signifier, when appearing on a book jacket’s spine, of literary credibility; five of the last eight winners of the National Book Award for fiction, for example, were published there.

Readers with memories of Mr. Giroux are invited to share them in the comments section below, or to email GalleyCat so that they may be appended here.

(photo: Library of Congress)

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