In Memoriam: Robert Giroux

He died Friday. If you don't know who he is, one quick glance at your bookshelf will acquaint you. He is the "Giroux" in "Farrar Strauss and Giroux" publishing house, or FSG. He went to Columbia University in the 30's and was captured by his professor Raymond Weaver, who was the first to read and edit Billy Budd, by Melville. What would it be like to discover classics, to be the first to ever read the manuscripts? So he pursued editing.

Here is just a list of some of the authors that he discovered, and forever placed their words between binding: Susan Sontag, Flannery O'Conner, Jack Kerouac, Robert Lowell, and Thomas Merton. He edited and published T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Carl Sandburg, Walker Percy, and William Golding.

The most influential Christian author's of the 20th century were published and edited by him: Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Conner, and Walker Percy. It is because of Giroux that the letters of thoughtful Christian writers are read and celebrated to this day.