Editor Jones worked for
Doubleday, first in New York City and then in Paris, where she read and recommended
The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, pulling it out of the rejection pile. Jones recalled that she came across Frank's work in a slush pile of material that had been rejected by other publishers; she was struck by a photograph of the girl on the cover of an advance copy of the French edition. "I read it all day," she noted. "When my boss returned, I told him, 'We have to publish this book.' He said, 'What? That book by that kid?'" She brought the diary to the attention of Doubleday's New York office. "I made the book quite important because I was so taken with it, and I felt it would have a real market in America. It's one of those seminal books that will never be forgotten," Jones said. In America's postwar years, home cooking was dominated by packaged and frozen food, with an emphasis on ease and speed. After the success of Child's cookbook, Jones continued to expand the resource options for American home cooks. "I got so excited by Julia's book and what it did for making people better cooks, and the tools that you needed to make it really work in an American city or small town, and I thought, ''If we could do this for French food, for heavens' sake, let's start doing it for other exotic cuisines!''" Jones recalled. "I used the word "exotic," and that meant the Middle East with
Claudia Roden, it meant better Indian cooking with
Madhur Jaffrey." After working with
Edna Lewis on
The Taste of Country Cooking, Jones focused more on American regional cooking. Major culinary authors Jones brought into print include Child,
Lidia Bastianich,
James Beard,
Marion Cunningham, Rosie Daley,
Edward Giobbi,
Marcella Hazan,
Madhur Jaffrey,
Irene Kuo,
Edna Lewis,
Joan Nathan,
Scott Peacock,
Jacques Pépin,
Claudia Roden, and Nina Simonds. The 18-book Knopf Cooks American series was Jones' creation. Jones was also the longtime editor of noted authors
John Updike,
Anne Tyler,
John Hersey,
Elizabeth Bowen,
Peter Taylor, and
William Maxwell. She retired as senior editor and vice president at
Alfred A. Knopf in 2011 and fully retired in 2013 after more than 60 years at the company.
Author Jones wrote three books with her husband, Evan, and wrote three on her own after his death: one on cooking for one person; a memoir of her life and food; and a cookbook for food that can be shared with dogs. Jones contributed to
Vogue,
Saveur,
Bon Appétit, Departures, and
Gourmet magazines. In 2006, she was awarded the
James Beard Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. She was portrayed by American actress
Erin Dilly in the 2009 film
Julie & Julia, and
Fiona Glascott in the 2022 series
Julia. “Learning to like cooking alone is an ongoing process. But the alternative is worse.” "For a long time, the women – and they were usually women – who wrote about food were treated as second-class citizens. All because they cook! I think that's opened up. A good writer gets some good assignments, and they're treated better somehow. It just takes time." == Life and death ==