Ann Harris, a legendary figure in the publishing industry as an editor for Rinehart & Company, Harper & Brothers, Harper & Row, Bantam Dell and Random House over a career that spanned more than 60 years, died June 1. She was 99. A "fierce and meticulous editor," Harris shaped many notable books, including the novels The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty and Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds; memoirs by Betty Ford and Dmitri Shostakovich; and the nonfiction books A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and The Book of Bread by Evan Jones.
Two of her books won Pulitzer Prizes: Robert Butler's Why Survive?: Being Old in America and Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin.
During the 1960s, she "was among a group of women to gain recognition for their burnishing skills at Manhattan's publishing houses," the New York Times wrote, noting that, in 1969, "after a career writing comedic novels and screenplays, William Peter Blatty wrangled a $10,000 advance to write a decidedly unfunny book, The Exorcist.... Before the novel could be published, though, the finer points of plot, character and demonic possession had to be shaped by an editor. The job went to the fastidious Ann Schakne Harris."
For six weeks, Blatty and Harris "bivouacked in a hotel in New York to sculpt the novel," which went on to sell 13 million copies in the U.S. and was her "breakthrough after she was in and out of the book business for 20 years, assisting other editors and working part time while raising two children. She was happy in that role, she said, but acknowledged that it 'was a heady thing to have a great big bestseller,' " the Times noted.
Harris had acquired McCullough's first novel, Tim (1974). For The Thorn Birds, she immersed herself in the editing process. McCullough traveled to Manhattan from New Haven, Conn., where she was a professor and researcher at Yale, sometimes staying at the Harris family's apartment. By 2015, when McCullough died, The Thorn Birds had sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.
"She was a classic, old-style editor," Frances McCullough, who worked with Harris as an editor at Harper & Row, said. "She took time and pains with authors."
Harris graduated from Hunter College in New York in 1946 with a bachelor's degree in English and received a master's degree from Radcliffe College in 1948. She began her career in publishing in 1952 as a "reader," and had become an editor by the mid-1960s. She left Harper & Row in 1980 and later that decade joined Bantam, where she edited Hawking's A Brief History of Time, which sold 10 million copies.
She was so captivated by Butler's Why Survive? that she left publishing briefly to work at a longevity clinic he established in 1990 at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. Katherine Harris, her daughter, said that when Ann Harris was in her 40s, she scrubbed every public reference to her age that she could find: "Her only plan for retirement was not to retire."
Harris's second Pulitzer-winning book, Toms River, was one she acquired, but she retired before it was published by Bantam in 2013, the Times noted. Author Dan Fagin said she helped define the book: "She believed in the power of books to tell big stories and make a big difference."
In a tribute posted on social media, author Stephen Fried described Harris as "one of the greatest, kindest, smartest, most fastidious and most fascinating editors in American publishing, during a career spanning six decades.... It was my incredible good fortune to be edited by Ann on four books in a row, every one of which she made so much better, before her retirement in 2008 from her final position at Bantam. It was also my incredible luck to have her as a friend....
"I would have to guess that when she retired, the stock of the company that made post-its must have nearly crashed, because nobody edited with as many yellow post-its as Ann Harris.... As I wrote in the acknowledgements of our first book together, 'I have never met a book editor with her level of intellectual and emotional engagement. I'd say she's the last of a breed, except I'm simply not sure there ever was anyone else like her before.' "