Maxwell Perkins
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Maxwell Evarts Perkins (September 20, 1884 – June 17, 1947) was the famous editor of novelists F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and others, at the publisher Charles Scribner's Sons during the first half of the 20th Century.
Born in New York City, Perkins graduated from Harvard in 1907.[1] His first job was as a reporter at the New York Times. Just three years later he landed a job at the Scribners publishing house as an advertising manager. In 1914, he was promoted to editorial staff. HIs first 'discovery' was in 1917 when he began corresponding with a young man who was a former Princeton student and army officer. Maxwell had to fight to get the young man's book published, but finally after several rewrites, in 1920, This Side of Paradise went to the presses. The author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, was only 24 years old and the youngest writer to be published at Scribner. Perkins and Fitzgerald ushered in the young jazz age at Scribner.
Perkin's correspondence with F. Scott Fitzgerald is collected in "Dear Scott, Dear Max: The Fitzgerald-Perkins Correspondence," ed. John Kuehl and Jackson Bryer (1991). A similar book regarding Perkins' relationship with Hemingway is "The Only Thing That Counts", ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli and Robert W. Trogdon. Perkins' own life and career are chronicled in his biography, "Max Perkins: Editor of Genius" by A. Scott Berg (ISBN 1-57322-621-1). Maxwell Perkins was the grandson of Secretary of State William M. Evarts, the great-great-grandson of Declaration of Independence signer Roger Sherman, and the uncle of Watergate Scandal special prosecutor Archibald Cox. He lived in New Canaan, Connecticut. His home is now on the National Registry of Historic Places
