Robert Giroux Dies at 94

By Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 9/5/2008 12:34:00 PM

Publishing legend Robert Giroux died last Friday morning at age 94. Giroux, a native of New Jersey, first got involved in publishing as an undergraguate at Columbia, where he worked on the Columbia Review. After a brief foray in publicity at CBS, Giroux took a job as a junior editor at the former Harcourt, Brace & Company. In 1955 Giroux moved to the house which would one day bear his name, Farrar, Straus and Company. Taking with him an impressive lineup of authors--Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Bernard Malamud, T.S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney, Jack Kerouac and Madeleine L’Engle among them--Giroux moved up from editor-in-chief and v-p to become a full partner at Farrar, Straus in 1964, when his name was added to the company. In addition to editing some of the greatest authors of the 20th century, Giroux also wrote a number of his own books, inlcuding The Education of an Editor and A Deed of Death.

Jonathan Galassi, president and publisher of FSG, said Giroux, along with Roger Straus, was essential in shaping the publishing company Galassi heads today. "He was one of the great editors in the history of American publishing, a man of impeccable discernment and sensibility, generosity, and humor, a wonderful raconteur and, above all, a champion of literature.”