Judith B. Jones (born 1924) is a senior editor and vice president at Knopf. In 1950 she rescued The Diary of Anne Frank from the rejects pile. In 1960 she championed a cookbook no other publisher would touch, named it Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and became Julia Child's editor from then on.[1] She ushered all of John Updike's books into print, including the posthumous titles, and edited many other important works both culinary and literary.
Jones has written a number of cookbooks herself, as well as a cookbook/memoir, The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food. Raised in New England, she lives in New York City and summers in Northern Vermont, where she also raises grass-fed cattle on the Bryn Teg farm.
Her husband and collaborator Evan Jones died in 1996. The couple had no children.
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Jones joined Knopf in 1957 as an editor working mainly on translations of French writers such as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Before that she worked for Doubleday, first in New York and then in Paris, where she read and recommended The Diary of Anne Frank, pulling it out of the rejection pile.[2]
Major culinary authors Jones has brought into print include Lidia Bastianich, James Beard, Julia Child, Marion Cunningham, Rosie Daley, Edward Giobbi, Marcella Hazan, Madhur Jaffrey, Edna Lewis, Joan Nathan, Scott Peacock, Jacques Pépin, Claudia Roden, and Nina Simonds. The 18-book Knopf Cooks American series was Judith's creation.[3] She is also the longtime editor of John Updike, Anne Tyler, John Hersey, Elizabeth Bowen, Peter Taylor and William Maxwell.[4]
Jones wrote three books with her husband Evan, and has written two on her own since his passing, one on cooking for one person, as well as a memoir of her life and food.
Jones has contributed to Vogue, Saveur, and Gourmet magazines. In 2006, she was awarded the James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award.
She was portrayed by American actress Erin Dilly in the 2009 film, Julie & Julia.