Friday, October 26, 2007—SF Chronicle
Editor who gave us Julia Child reflects on her own life in food
Martin Rubin
The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food By Judith Jones KNOPF; 304 PAGES; $24.95
“In the early 1950s, Judith Jones returned to the United States after several years in Paris. Hired as an editor at the New York publishing house of Knopf to work on its translations of such authors as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, she soon widened her field to include writers like Elizabeth Bowen. But something had happened to her in France, besides improving her language skills and finding the man who would be her husband for nearly half a century. She had fallen madly, hopelessly in love with French cuisine. Unfortunately for Jones and her husband, Evan, hopeless seemed indeed to be the word for the food scene she found on her return to the United States. . . .
“It is not an exaggeration to say that by bringing us the likes of Elizabeth David, James Beard and Julia Child, Jones changed the way Americans cooked, shopped and ate. And she has continued to broaden horizons with books filled with the wisdom and panache of cooks such as Madhur Jaffrey, Claudia Roden and Lidia Bastianich. . . .”
For the full review, click here.