Publisher of great 20th-century writers and thinkers who lifted the lid on the business of books
In March 1990, the publishing world was stunned by news of André Schiffrin's controversial resignation from the position he had held for the previous 29 years as editor-in-chief of Pantheon Books. Most of his senior editorial team resigned alongside him and a letter of protest was signed by more than 300 eminent authors, including Arthur Miller, William Styron and Kurt Vonnegut. The New Yorkers among them mounted a demonstration outside (the parent company) Random House's headquarters and EL Doctorow used the National Book Critics Circle annual dinner as a platform to express his outrage. The episode ignited a debate about the tension between the political and commercial role of publishing that continues to this day.
During his time at Pantheon, André, who has died aged 78, published some of the great writers and thinkers of the second half of the 20th century while sticking to a consistently leftwing agenda. Eric Hobsbawm, EP Thompson, Edward Said, Anita Brookner, RD Laing, Michel Foucault, Noam Chomsky, Art Spiegelman and Marguerite Duras were in his stable, along with Studs Terkel, the idea for whose bestselling oral histories André came up with after listening to Terkel's radio shows. As independent publishers began to be acquired by global conglomerates and phrases such as "fiscal responsibility" were bandied about, André categorically refused to cut his cloth, his list or his belief in the importance of publishing voices who deserved to be heard regardless of their financial potential.
André was a dyed-in-the-wool publisher. He was born in Paris to a French mother, Simone (nee Heymann), and a Russian émigré father, Jacques, who co-founded and ran the prestigious Editions Pléiade until the anti-Jewish laws of the Vichy regime forced the family to flee – aided by their friend André Gide – to New York. There, in 1944, Jacques joined Pantheon Books, founded by his fellow exiles Kurt and Helen Wolff, and helped bring European writers such as Saint-Exupéry and Günter Grass, and the Russian Boris Pasternak to an American readership before his premature death in 1950.
André was offered a full scholarship to Yale and graduated summa cum laude before setting off to do a master's at Cambridge. There, "in the empyrean heights of English culture", he became the first American editor of Granta magazine, and met and made lifelong friends with Michael Frayn and Jonathan Miller (both of whom he went on to publish). Most importantly, he met his future wife, Maria Elena de la Iglesia (known as Leina), whose parents had fled Franco's Spain and made a home in Devon.
Back in New York, André was invited to join Pantheon, newly acquired by Random House. Two adored daughters, Anya and Natalia, were born and André, always a keen urban anthropologist, would take them on weekend expeditions to explore different neighbourhoods. The family spent long summer holidays in Europe and it was during this period that my parents met the Schiffrins. My father, the literary agent Hilary Rubinstein, represented some of André's British authors and the two couples formed a friendship that has survived down to a third generation.
The Schiffrins always stayed with us in London and André was a glamorous and generous guest, sallying forth to business meetings wearing his trademark wide-striped, brightly coloured Marimekko shirt and knitted tie, and returning at the end of the day bearing gifts of rare olive oil and very expensive chocolate. At the Schiffrins' New York penthouse apartment on the Upper West Side, terrific parties were held on the terrace where celebrated authors rubbed shoulders with junior associates from Pantheon, many of whom can now be found in the upper echelons of the major New York publishing houses.
When the break from Pantheon came, André spent minimal time sulking in his tent. Within two years, he had raised enough money to launch the New Press, a not-for-profit "publisher in the public interest". It was an immediate success; many of his authors, including Terkel, left Pantheon to join him, and an ambitious intern programme aimed at attracting candidates from minority ethnic backgrounds into the book business has benefited the wider world of publishing.
With the New Press established, André became an author himself, writing a memoir, A Political Education: Growing Up in Paris and New York (2007), and two books about the publishing industry, The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read (2000) and Words and Money (2010). Translated into more than 20 languages, the books, a reasoned excoriation of the conglomeration of culture, established André as something of an international literary lion and an inspiration to right-thinking, independent publishers, while maintaining his position as a thorn in the side of corporate publishing.
He is survived by Leina, Anya and Natalia; and three grandchildren, Leo, Lara and Katya.
• André Schiffrin, publisher, born 14 June 1935; died 1 December 2013
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