William Jovanovich, Publisher, 81

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Thursday December 6 6:49 PM ET 

U.S. Publisher William Jovanovich dead at 81

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - William Jovanovich, former head of one of the top
U.S. publishing houses who championed some of the most influential 20th
century writers, including George Orwell, Hannah Arendt and Alice
Walker, has died of a heart attack at age 81, his family said Thursday.


Jovanovich died on Tuesday at home in the San Diego suburb of Point
Loma, Calif., his son, Peter, said.

During his career, Jovanovich rose from college textbook salesman in
the late 1940s to president, chief executive and chairman of New York
literary publishing house Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1954.

When he took the helm, the company, then known as Harcourt Brace and
Co. had annual sales of $8 million and 125 employees. At the time of
Jovanovich's retirement 36 years later in 1990, the company was among
the leading scientific and educational publishers in the United States
with annual sales of $1.7 billion and a staff of 12,000.

It had also taken his last name as part of its title.

But he had left the company mired in debt to foil a takeover by British
publisher Robert Maxwell and the company was sold a year after he
departed.

Jovanovich is credited with piecing together the autobiography of
Charles Lindbergh after the famous flyer died of cancer, and
championing the works of German Jewish political philosopher Hannah
Arendt, economist Milton Friedman, novelists James Gould Cozzens and
Alice Walker. Among the authors he published were Italo Calvino,
Umberto Eco, Gunter Grass, C.S. Lewis, Eugene McCarthy and T.S. Eliot,
whose letters he edited.

TEXTBOOK SALESMAN

Jovanovich was born in 1920 to Polish and Serbian immigrants in a coal
camp in Northern Colorado. After a four-year scholarship at the
University of Colorado and a two-year graduate fellowship in English
and American literature at Harvard Jovanovich joined the U.S. Navy
(news - web sites) as an officer in 1942 and served through World War
II, leaving the service 1946.

Afterwards he enrolled at Columbia University in New York City. Upon
running out of money he went to work as a textbook salesman at
Harcourt, Brace and Co., for $50 a week.

By the mid-1950s he had become intimate friends with such major
scholars and writers as T.S. Eliot, Carl Sandburg, Mary McCarthy,
Octavio Paz, Hannah Arendt and Lindbergh, whose autobiography,
``Autobiography of Values,'' he began editing 12 days before the great
aviator's death.

As the story goes, Lindbergh, with 12 days to live, called Jovanovich
to his bedside and handed him a brown valise, his sole piece of luggage
in 30 years of flying. The bag was stuffed with more than 3,000 pages
of notes and memoirs.

Jovanovich enlisted the help of Yale archivist, Judith Schiff, and
together they gathered the memoirs and notes into Lindbergh's
autobiography.

Jovanovich was also the editor of such books as Milton Friedman's
``Free to Choose'' and George Orwell's collected essays, which,
according to his son, marked the first time the public realized the
breadth of Orwell's thinking.

Jovanovich was also instrumental in publishing Arendt's ''The Origins
of Totalitarianism,'' his son said. And although he wasn't close
friends with novelist Alice Walker, Jovanovich not only published her
blockbuster novel, ``The Color Purple,'' he was among the first
mainstream publishers to champion several other African American
authors, his son said.

Jovanovich also wrote seven books of his own, including four novels.

He is survived by his wife, Martha, three children and six
grandchildren.

Reuters/Variety REUTERS 


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