The Maverick: George Weidenfeld and the Golden Age of Publishing

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. (Aug.)