The Maverick
George Weidenfeld and the Golden Age of Publishing
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After arriving in London just before the Second World War as a penniless and friendless Austrian-Jewish refugee, George Weidenfeld went on to transform not only the world of publishing but the culture of ideas. The books that he published include momentous titles such as Lolita, Double Helix, The Group and The Hedgehog and the Fox, with authors he championed ranging from Joan Didion, Mary McCarthy and Edna O'Brien to Henry Miller, Harold Wilson, Saul Bellow and Henry Kissinger.
In this first biography, Thomas Harding provides a full, unvarnished and at times difficult history of this complex and fascinating character and crafts a portrait of the publisher's life that is inextricable from the efforts and intricacies of putting a book into the world. Structured around twenty books associated with George Weidenfeld, and intercut with explorations of contemporary concerns such as the right to publish, freedom of speech and separating the art from the artist, The Maverick tells the captivating story behind the life of this iconic publisher.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Biographer Harding (The House by the Lake) provides a revealing look behind the scenes of U.K. publisher Weidenfeld and Nicolson focused on its iconoclastic cofounder George Weidenfeld (1919–2016). A champion of "the mavericks, the scandalous, the subversive," Weidenfeld's career spanned from the original British version of Lolita in 1955 to Keith Richards's 2010 rock and roll memoir Life. Harding takes an intriguing approach by looking at Weidenfeld's life story through the lens of specific books he published; each chapter is named for a key title from Weidenfeld and Nicolson's catalog, including Mary McCarthy's novel The Group and James Watson's scientific memoir The Double Helix. Along the way, readers are treated to firsthand accounts of author versus publisher spats, including Saul Bellow's gripes about cover design, and insights into the challenges of managing international rights for a surefire bestseller. Though Harding touches on Weidenfeld's personal life, he focuses more on deals, negotiations, and prima donna authors than on analyzing his subject's motivations. Still, this "investigation into publishing, including its dark arts" will leave readers with a vivid picture of the working life of a publisher.
