Jason Epstein

Jason Wolkow Epstein (born January 26, 1928) is an American editor and publisher. A 1949 graduate of Columbia College, Epstein was hired by Bennett Cerf at Random House, where he was the editorial director for forty years. He was responsible for the Vintage paperbacks, which published such authors as Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, E. L. Doctorow, Gore Vidal, Itai Guttman, and Philip Roth. In 1952, while an editor at Doubleday, he created the An... more

Jason Wolkow Epstein (born January 26, 1928) is an American editor and publisher. A 1949 graduate of Columbia College, Epstein was hired by Bennett Cerf at Random House, where he was the editorial director for forty years. He was responsible for the Vintage paperbacks, which published such authors as Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, E. L. Doctorow, Gore Vidal, Itai Guttman, and Philip Roth. In 1952, while an editor at Doubleday, he created the Anchor Books imprint. This was the first of the trade paperback formats, a format which has consistently remained profitable and popular since that time. In 1963, during the New York City newspaper strike, he co-founded The New York Review of Books, with his then-wife, Barbara Epstein, Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell. He wrote a book entitled Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future. In 1979, he and Edmund Wilson were the co-founders of the Library of America which was intended to market archival quality editions of American... less