Robert Giroux

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Robert Giroux (born April 8, 1914) is an influential American book editor and publisher. While an editor with Harcourt, he was hired away to work for Roger W. Straus, Jr. at Farrar & Straus, where he became a partner and, eventually, chairman. The firm was henceforth known as Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Among the writers Giroux discovered or developed are John Berryman, Jean Stafford, Bernard Malamud, Thomas Merton, and Flannery O'Connor. Many of his authors are recipients of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Pulitzer Prize, and other prestigious literary awards. Giroux also worked with author Jack Kerouac on the manuscript for his Beat classic On the Road. In a documentary interview, Giroux recalls how he tried to explain to Kerouac that the novel, typed out on a huge, single roll of paper, needed to be worked on, to which Kerouac replied solemnly: "There shall be no editing of this manuscript, this manuscript was dictated by the Holy Ghost."

Among the honors he has received for his work are an honorary doctorate from Seton Hall University in 1999^[1], The Mayoral Award of Honor for Art and Culture from the City of New York in 1989 ^[2], and the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award in Arts and Letters from New York University in 1988 ^[3]. As a 1936 graduate of Columbia College of Columbia University, where he was editor of the literary magazine The Columbia Review and president of the Philolexian Society, he also received the Alexander Hamilton Medal, the alumni association's highest honor, in 1987. In 2006, he was presented with the Philolexian Award for Distinguished Literary Achievement.