Edith Raymond Locke, Mademoiselle Editor in the 1970s, Dies at 99

Edith Raymond Locke, Mademoiselle Editor in the 1970s, Dies at 99


Herman Laub was fired from his job. Nazis appeared at their condominium door to rifle through their belongings (at a single position confiscating German translations of Sinclair Lewis and Upton Sinclair as “communist literature”) or to power Edith and her mom to carry out humiliating responsibilities, like washing the floor of a Nazi Party office.

Credit…via Katie Aviv

Edith still left Vienna for New York Metropolis in April 1939, arriving on the British ocean liner Aquitania. She was 18, spoke no English and was by yourself. Her mothers and fathers were being not able to get visas to the United States, which preserved stringent quotas for European immigrants they expended the war several years in England.

Edith Laub lived with relatives in Brooklyn, labored in a toothpaste manufacturing facility, amongst other work, and realized English at night school. A secretarial occupation at Harper’s Bazaar journal led to an assistant editor placement at Junior Bazaar, a competitor to Mademoiselle.

Doing work for the Abbott Kimball Enterprise, an promotion agency, she wrote a standard e-newsletter about trend. It was sharp enough to catch the notice of Betsy Blackwell, the editor in chief at Mademoiselle, who employed her in the early 1950s.

Mademoiselle, or Millie, as it was nicknamed, was devoted to manner and elegance but also to literature, publishing the do the job of James Baldwin, William Faulkner, Jane Bowles, Truman Capote and Carson McCullers, among the a lot of other authors.

It was known, also, for its guest editor competitiveness, when college juniors were being invited to edit the magazine’s August situation and were being place up at the Barbizon Lodge, then a household lodge for women. (Sylvia Plath was chosen in 1952, and rendered her darkening summer months there in her novel, “The Bell Jar.”)



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