Jean Stein, pioneering oral historian, dies aged 83

Literary editor and author of bestselling books including Edie: An American Girl is believed to have killed herself

Bestselling author Jean Stein, known for her pioneering oral histories, is believed to have killed herself by jumping from a penthouse in upper Manhattan in New York. She was 83.

Stein began her career as an assistant to theatre director Elia Kazan on the original production of Tennessee Williams’s play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. An editor on the Paris Review, she rose to prominence for her pioneering use of oral narratives to write three histories of the US in the 20th century. One of them, 1982’s Edie: An American Girl, became an international bestseller. Melding together the voices of family and friends including Andy Warhol, for whom Edie Sedgwick acted as muse, the book used the socialite’s troubled story to shed light on the decade. Norman Mailer praised it as “the book of the 60s that we have been waiting for”.

Related: West of Eden by Jean Stein review – an insider’s account of Hollywood death and dysfunction

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