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Creator
Jones, Barbara
Call number
Berg Coll MSS 188090
Physical description
1.67 linear feet (4 boxes)
Language
English
Preferred Citation
Barbara Jones editorial files related to Paul Auster, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library
Repository
Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
Access to materials
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Paul Auster (1947-2023) was an American writer, poet, filmmaker, and translator whose work often touched on themes of coincidence, chance, memory, and solitude. Barbara Jones is an executive editor at Henry Holt & Company, who served as Auster's editor for many years. The Barbara Jones editorial files related to Paul Auster, dating from 2005 to 2023, detail Jones's editing of Auster's works. The collection is represented through drafts, notes, correspondence, proofs, and marketing reports.

Biographical/historical information

Barbara Jones is an executive editor at Henry Holt & Company, where she acquires and edits books of fiction, memoir, and narrative nonfiction. She was Paul Auster's editor for many years. Prior to Henry Holt, Jones served as editorial director for Hyperion Books and the imprint Voice, and as an editor at the magazines Harper's, Grand Street, and Vogue.

Paul Auster (1947-2024) was a Brooklyn-based novelist, filmmaker, poet, essayist, and translator. He is best-known for The New York Trilogy, a series of three loosely linked novellas published separately in 1985 and 1986, and for his subsequent novels In the Country of Last Things, Moon Palace, Mr. Vertigo, and 4 3 2 1. In these novels and others, Auster's protagonists, frequently writers and Brooklynites themselves, struggle to find meaning in lives set adrift by coincidence and tragedy. These themes resonate throughout Auster's fiction, nonfiction, and screenwriting.

Scope and arrangement

The Barbara Jones editorial files related to Paul Auster, dating from 2005 to 2023, detail Jones's editing of Auster works. The collection is represented through drafts, notes, correspondence, proofs, marketing reports, and contracts. Files are arranged alphabetically by title, followed by Auster general files, Auster ephemera, and non-Auster material.

Auster works represented include the novel 4 3 2 1; the memoirs Report from the Interior and Winter Journal; Auster's biography of Stephen Crane, Burning Boy; and graphic novel adaptations of The New York Trilogy.

Administrative information

Source of acquisition

Gift of Barbara A. Jones, 2024.

Processing information

Processed by Christopher Arena in 2025.

Related Material

Paul Auster papers, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library

Using the collection

Location

Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street, New York, NY 10018-2788
Third Floor, Room 320