Mr. Giroux attended Columbia College, where in 1936 he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a major in English and comparative literature. As editor of Columbia Review, he published John Berryman's first poems and early writings of fellow student Thomas Merton, who would one day become the author of Mr. Giroux's most successful best-seller, The Seven Storey Mountain. On graduation, he joined the Columbia Broadcasting System and worked in its public relations department for three years, editing two books based on the texts of broadcasts of Edward R. Murrow, William Shirer, Eric Sevareid, and others. In 1939, he was hired by Harcourt, Brace & Company as a junior editor, and, except for a three-year stint in the Navy during World War II, he stayed with Harcourt, serving as editor in chief from 1948 until 1955.
When he left Harcourt, Brace to become vice president and editor in chief of Farrar, Straus and Company, more than a dozen authors followed him. He became a full partner with the firm in 1964 and its name was changed to Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He became chairman of the editorial board in 1973. Mr. Giroux's authors included Hannah Arendt, John Berryman, Elizabeth Bishop, T.S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney, Paul Horgan, Jack Kerouac, Madeleine L'Engle, Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, Bernard Malamud, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, George Orwell, Xavier Rynne, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Derek Walcott, and Edmund Wilson.
Mr. Giroux was the author of The Education of an Editor (1981), The Book Known as Q: A Consideration of Shakespeare's Sonnets (1982), and A Deed of Death (1990). He edited and introduced The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor (1971), The Freedom of the Poet by John Berryman (1976), The Collected Prose of Elizabeth Bishop (1984), Robert Lowell: Collected Prose (1987), and One Art: Letters by Elizabeth Bishop (1994). He also wrote numerous essays, including memoirs of E. M. Forster and John Berryman for the Yale Review.
Among his awards and honors were Columbia University's Alexander Hamilton Medal, whose recipients include Dwight D. Eisenhower and Alfred A. Knopf, and the New York Mayor's Award of Honor for Arts and Culture.
Jonathan Galassi, President and Publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, said today, "When Robert Giroux joined Roger Straus early in the life of his fledgling company after a distinguished career at Harcourt, Brace, many of the outstanding authors he had worked with there - from Flannery Connor to Robert Lowell to T. S. Eliot - followed him. Together, Roger and Bob and their gifted and dedicated colleagues gave Farrar, Straus & Giroux, as it came to be known, the essential shape and profile it has 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."
Visit our UK site
