Sublime

More a friend to his authors than a taskmaster, he aided them in every way. He helped them structure their books, if help was needed; thought up titles, invented plots; he served as psychoanalyst, lovelorn adviser, marriage counselor, career manager, money-lender. Few editors before him had done so much work on manuscripts, yet he was always faithf

Harpers.

Malcolm Cowley assisted me in three important ways: His New Yorker profile of Perkins, “Unshaken Friend,” published in 1944, was the most comprehensive account of Perkins’s life to date.

Maxwell Perkins gave all his authors the feeling that he cared as much for their work as they did themselves.