Mary-Kay Wilmers
Encyclopedia
Mary-Kay Wilmers is an editor and journalist who has been the editor of the London Review of Books
since 1992.
and grew up in New York City
. Her mother was Russian and of Russian Jewish descent, while her father's family were, she said, "very English", although they had come from Germany. For many years Wilmers worked on a book, published in 2009 as The Eitingons: A Twentieth Century Story (London, Faber; ISBN 9780571234721), recounting the story of her mother's Russian relations, including that of her grandfather's cousin, Leonid Eitingon, an agent in Joseph Stalin
’s NKVD
who was responsible for masterminding the assassination of Leon Trotsky
.
In 1946 Wilmers' parents moved to Europe, spending time in London, Portugal, Belgium and Switzerland. Her father established a utilities company that became a Belgium multinational. Wilmers was educated in Brussels
and at boarding school
in England, she said that for some time she was happier speaking in French than in English. She went on to university at Oxford
, from where she graduated in 1960 having read modern languages. For the week of her finals she moved into the Randolph Hotel
, staying with her father whose presence was required as Wilmers was threatening to refuse to sit the exams.
At Oxford Wilmers became friends with Alan Bennett
, later a regular contributor to the London Review of Books, who said about her time at university that, “Outside the novels of Nancy Mitford or Evelyn Waugh, I had never come across anyone who behaved so confidently or in such a cosmopolitan fashion.”
, but instead went to work at the publishers Faber and Faber
, at first being employed as a secretary. On one occasion she thought she might be sacked for saying "bugger" in front of T.S. Eliot, whose letters she used to type up. She went on to become an editor at Faber and Faber, and, among many books, was responsible for commissioning Eva Figes
to write Patriarchal Attitudes, one of the first books of British feminism. She left Faber aged 29 to become deputy editor of the Listener, edited by Karl Miller
, and in the 1970s had a spell at the Times Literary Supplement.
(LRB), conceived to fill a gap in the market as a year long industrial dispute had closed the Times Literary Supplement. The new review was an off-shoot of the New York Review of Books, at first appearing folded inside the older publication. The first edition appeared in October 1979.
The New York Review of Books withdrew its support after a few months and in May 1980 Wilmers made the first of a number of investments of money inherited from her father, establishing an independent London Review of Books and later making Wilmers the majority shareholder. In January 2010 it was reported that the magazine was £27 million pounds in debt to the Wilmers family trust. "It’s family money and the debts have been rising for many years,” Wilmers said. “But I really just look after the commas.”
Wilmers became co-editor in 1988 and editor in 1992. Her style was to take a highly interventionist approach, "You want to help readers along. Not discourage them by making them go through a swamp of unnecessary sentences," she said. Her friend Hilary Mantel called Wilmers "a presiding genius", while Andrew O'Hagan explained: “She can’t bear a lazy sentence or secondhand metaphor. She’s tireless in her commitment to the paper”. In 2009 the LRBs circulation was 48,000, making it the largest selling literary publication in Europe.
As an editor, Wilmers has been closely associated with the work of a number of novelists and essayists, including Alan Bennett
, John Lanchester
, Andrew O'Hagan
, Jenny Diski
, Hilary Mantel
, Blake Morrison
, Alan Hollinghurst
, Seamus Heaney
, Ian McEwan
, Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes
, Craig Raine
, Colm Tóibín
, Stefan Collini
, James Wood
, Linda Colley
, Jacqueline Rose
, Paul Foot
, Tariq Ali
and Edward Luttwak
. Many of these were published prominently when at the beginnings of their careers.
Politically the review is not known for following a consistent party political line, although Wilmers described herself as being “captivated by the left but not of it”. Under her editorship the review's treatment of political matters sometimes attracted controversy. In 2006 an article by academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt was criticised in some quarters for its claim that the foreign policy of the United States was in the grip of an “Israel lobby”. Wilmers has herself said, “I’m unambiguously hostile to Israel because it’s a mendacious state". An article by the Cambridge historian Mary Beard, published after the events of September 11, 2001, attracted some attention for suggesting that “America had it coming”, and when David Marquand, the political historian and principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, submitted a review praising Tony Blair
’s handling of the post-September 11 period as "impeccable”, Wilmers replied saying, “I can’t square it with my conscience to praise so wholeheartedly Blair’s conduct..." and pulled the piece. Marquand announced that he was “utterly shocked”.
Wilmers has written for the Listener, the TLS
, the New Review, the New Yorker
, and the London Review of Books
. A book of tributes to her, Bad Character, was published privately in June 2008 and distributed as a limited edition.
, with whom she had two sons, Sam and Will Frears (a stage and film director). The couple divorced in the early 1970s.
London Review of Books
The London Review of Books is a fortnightly British magazine of literary and intellectual essays.-History:The LRB was founded in 1979, during the year-long lock-out at The Times, by publisher A...
since 1992.
Family and education
Mary-Kay Wilmers was born in ChicagoChicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and grew up in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. Her mother was Russian and of Russian Jewish descent, while her father's family were, she said, "very English", although they had come from Germany. For many years Wilmers worked on a book, published in 2009 as The Eitingons: A Twentieth Century Story (London, Faber; ISBN 9780571234721), recounting the story of her mother's Russian relations, including that of her grandfather's cousin, Leonid Eitingon, an agent in Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
’s NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
who was responsible for masterminding the assassination of Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
.
In 1946 Wilmers' parents moved to Europe, spending time in London, Portugal, Belgium and Switzerland. Her father established a utilities company that became a Belgium multinational. Wilmers was educated in Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
and at boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
in England, she said that for some time she was happier speaking in French than in English. She went on to university at Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
, from where she graduated in 1960 having read modern languages. For the week of her finals she moved into the Randolph Hotel
Macdonald Randolph Hotel
Macdonald Randolph Hotel is a hotel in Oxford, England. It is in central Oxford on the south side of Beaumont Street, at the corner with Magdalen Street, opposite the Ashmolean Museum and close to the Oxford Playhouse...
, staying with her father whose presence was required as Wilmers was threatening to refuse to sit the exams.
At Oxford Wilmers became friends with Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research mediaeval history at the university for several years...
, later a regular contributor to the London Review of Books, who said about her time at university that, “Outside the novels of Nancy Mitford or Evelyn Waugh, I had never come across anyone who behaved so confidently or in such a cosmopolitan fashion.”
Early career
After graduation she toyed with the idea of being a translator at the United NationsUnited Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
, but instead went to work at the publishers Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber
Faber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music...
, at first being employed as a secretary. On one occasion she thought she might be sacked for saying "bugger" in front of T.S. Eliot, whose letters she used to type up. She went on to become an editor at Faber and Faber, and, among many books, was responsible for commissioning Eva Figes
Eva Figes
Eva Figes is an English author.Figes has written novels, literary criticism, studies of feminism, and vivid memoirs relating to her Berlin childhood and later experiences as a Jewish refugee from Hitler's Germany. She arrived in Britain in 1939 with her parents and a younger brother...
to write Patriarchal Attitudes, one of the first books of British feminism. She left Faber aged 29 to become deputy editor of the Listener, edited by Karl Miller
Karl Miller
Karl Fergus Connor Miller FRSL is a British literary editor, critic and writer.He was educated at the Royal High School of Edinburgh and Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied English. He became literary editor of The Spectator and the New Statesman...
, and in the 1970s had a spell at the Times Literary Supplement.
London Review of Books
In 1979 Wilmers joined Miller in founding the London Review of BooksLondon Review of Books
The London Review of Books is a fortnightly British magazine of literary and intellectual essays.-History:The LRB was founded in 1979, during the year-long lock-out at The Times, by publisher A...
(LRB), conceived to fill a gap in the market as a year long industrial dispute had closed the Times Literary Supplement. The new review was an off-shoot of the New York Review of Books, at first appearing folded inside the older publication. The first edition appeared in October 1979.
The New York Review of Books withdrew its support after a few months and in May 1980 Wilmers made the first of a number of investments of money inherited from her father, establishing an independent London Review of Books and later making Wilmers the majority shareholder. In January 2010 it was reported that the magazine was £27 million pounds in debt to the Wilmers family trust. "It’s family money and the debts have been rising for many years,” Wilmers said. “But I really just look after the commas.”
Wilmers became co-editor in 1988 and editor in 1992. Her style was to take a highly interventionist approach, "You want to help readers along. Not discourage them by making them go through a swamp of unnecessary sentences," she said. Her friend Hilary Mantel called Wilmers "a presiding genius", while Andrew O'Hagan explained: “She can’t bear a lazy sentence or secondhand metaphor. She’s tireless in her commitment to the paper”. In 2009 the LRBs circulation was 48,000, making it the largest selling literary publication in Europe.
As an editor, Wilmers has been closely associated with the work of a number of novelists and essayists, including Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research mediaeval history at the university for several years...
, John Lanchester
John Lanchester
John Henry Lanchester is a British journalist and novelist. He was born in Hamburg, brought up in Hong Kong and educated in England, at Gresham's School, Holt between 1972 and 1980 and St John's College, Oxford.-Works:...
, Andrew O'Hagan
Andrew O'Hagan
Andrew O'Hagan, FRSL is a Scottish novelist and non-fiction author. He is also an Editor at Large of Esquire and is currently a creative writing fellow at King's College London. He was selected by for inclusion in their 2003 list of the top 20 young British novelists. His novels appear...
, Jenny Diski
Jenny Diski
-External links:***...
, Hilary Mantel
Hilary Mantel
Hilary Mary Mantel CBE , née Thompson, is an English novelist, short story writer and critic. Her work, ranging in subject from personal memoir to historical fiction, has been short-listed for major literary awards...
, Blake Morrison
Blake Morrison
Philip Blake Morrison is a British poet and author who has published in a wide range of fiction and non-fiction genres. His greatest success came with the publication of his memoirs And When Did You Last See Your Father? which won the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography. He has also written a...
, Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst is a British novelist, and winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty.-Biography:Hollinghurst was born on 26 May 1954 in Stroud, Gloucestershire, the only child of James Hollinghurst, a bank manager, and his wife, Elizabeth...
, Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...
, Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan
Ian Russell McEwan CBE, FRSA, FRSL is a British novelist and screenwriter, and one of Britain's most highly regarded writers. In 2008, The Times named him among their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"....
, Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes
Julian Patrick Barnes is a contemporary English writer, and winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, for his book The Sense of an Ending...
, Craig Raine
Craig Raine
Craig Raine is an English poet and critic born in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, England. Along with Christopher Reid, he is the best-known exponent of Martian poetry.-Life:...
, Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín is a multi-award-winning Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and, most recently, poet.Tóibín is Leonard Milberg Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University in New Jersey and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the...
, Stefan Collini
Stefan Collini
Stefan Collini is an English literary critic and academic, Professor of English Literature and Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge. He has contributed essays to such publications as The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation and London Review of Books.- Works :* "." The Times...
, James Wood
James Wood
James Wood was an officer of the U.S. Continental Army during the American Revolution and the 11th Governor of Virginia.-Personal life:...
, Linda Colley
Linda Colley
Linda Colley, CBE, FBA, FRSL, FRHistS is a historian of Britain, empire and nationalism. She is Shelby M. C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University in the United States.-Early life and education:...
, Jacqueline Rose
Jacqueline Rose
Jacqueline Rose is a British academic who is currently Professor of English at Queen Mary, University of London.-Life and work:...
, Paul Foot
Paul Foot
Paul Mackintosh Foot was a British investigative journalist, political campaigner, author, and long-time member of the Socialist Workers Party...
, Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali , , is a British Pakistani military historian, novelist, journalist, filmmaker, public intellectual, political campaigner, activist, and commentator...
and Edward Luttwak
Edward Luttwak
Edward Nicolae Luttwak is an American military strategist and historian who has published works on military strategy, history and international relations.-Biography:...
. Many of these were published prominently when at the beginnings of their careers.
Politically the review is not known for following a consistent party political line, although Wilmers described herself as being “captivated by the left but not of it”. Under her editorship the review's treatment of political matters sometimes attracted controversy. In 2006 an article by academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt was criticised in some quarters for its claim that the foreign policy of the United States was in the grip of an “Israel lobby”. Wilmers has herself said, “I’m unambiguously hostile to Israel because it’s a mendacious state". An article by the Cambridge historian Mary Beard, published after the events of September 11, 2001, attracted some attention for suggesting that “America had it coming”, and when David Marquand, the political historian and principal of Mansfield College, Oxford, submitted a review praising Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
’s handling of the post-September 11 period as "impeccable”, Wilmers replied saying, “I can’t square it with my conscience to praise so wholeheartedly Blair’s conduct..." and pulled the piece. Marquand announced that he was “utterly shocked”.
Wilmers has written for the Listener, the TLS
The Times Literary Supplement
The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...
, the New Review, the New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, and the London Review of Books
London Review of Books
The London Review of Books is a fortnightly British magazine of literary and intellectual essays.-History:The LRB was founded in 1979, during the year-long lock-out at The Times, by publisher A...
. A book of tributes to her, Bad Character, was published privately in June 2008 and distributed as a limited edition.
Personal life
In 1968 Wilmers married film director Stephen FrearsStephen Frears
Stephen Arthur Frears is an English film director.-Early life:Frears was born in Leicester, England to Ruth M., a social worker, and Dr Russell E. Frears, a general practitioner and accountant. He did not find out that his mother was Jewish until he was in his late 20s...
, with whom she had two sons, Sam and Will Frears (a stage and film director). The couple divorced in the early 1970s.