Writing in The Guardian, Christobel Kent eulogizes writer and memoirist, Diana Athill, who died this week aged 101, while also giving insight into the vital role that editors play in book publishing, and the challenges faced by women entering this world in the 1940s:
.... What struck me, though, as I got to know her – and read her own remarkable early books Instead of a Letter and After a Funeral, then largely unknown – was the courage she must have had. How long and arduous was the fight for a woman born at the end of the first world war, in the face of casual discrimination and low pay, without domestic security or professional acknowledgment, to be certain of her own fierce intellect, of her right to a voice and to make her living by it. To observe Diana and her fellow editors in the little hive of editorial offices – buried almost invisible at the heart of Deutsch – all tirelessly working away to bring good writing to perfection was, for a recent graduate in literature, to observe a kind of miracle in action. Diana stood up for forgotten writers, writers from the Commonwealth, defiers like herself of convention, and most perfectly inspiring of all, she believed in the power of the written word, had devoted her life to its service and not felt sorry for herself for a moment...
.... What struck me, though, as I got to know her – and read her own remarkable early books Instead of a Letter and After a Funeral, then largely unknown – was the courage she must have had. How long and arduous was the fight for a woman born at the end of the first world war, in the face of casual discrimination and low pay, without domestic security or professional acknowledgment, to be certain of her own fierce intellect, of her right to a voice and to make her living by it. To observe Diana and her fellow editors in the little hive of editorial offices – buried almost invisible at the heart of Deutsch – all tirelessly working away to bring good writing to perfection was, for a recent graduate in literature, to observe a kind of miracle in action. Diana stood up for forgotten writers, writers from the Commonwealth, defiers like herself of convention, and most perfectly inspiring of all, she believed in the power of the written word, had devoted her life to its service and not felt sorry for herself for a moment...