Thomas Henry Guinzburg was an American editor and publisher who served as the first managing editor of The Paris Review following its inception in 1953 and later succeeded his father as president of the Viking Press.
10 Facts About Thomas Guinzburg
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Thomas Guinzburg enjoyed the book so much that it convinced his father to publish it and ended up selling four million copies, giving the young Thomas Guinzburg his first inkling that he might have a career in the publishing business.
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Thomas Guinzburg attended the Hotchkiss School and volunteered to serve in the United States Marine Corps during World War II.
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Thomas Guinzburg was deployed for more than two years and received the Purple Heart for his brave action on Iwo Jima.
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Thomas Guinzburg was always encouraging The Review not to be deterred from discovering young writers of quality" while maintaining "a grasp of the really rough details of commercial publishing.
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Thomas Guinzburg began working in the publicity department of the Viking Press in 1954 and assumed the position of president upon his father's early death in 1961 from lung cancer.
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Thomas Guinzburg published books by Saul Bellow, Kingsley Amis, Rebecca West, Nadine Gordimer, Graham Greene, Wallace Stegner, John Ashberry, Arthur Miller, Hannah Arendt, Malcolm Cowley, Jimmy Breslin, Gordon Parks, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, James Baldwin, Iris Murdoch and John Steinbeck who was Best Man at his wedding to Rusty Unger.
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Thomas Guinzburg published Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon, which won the National Book Award the following year.
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Thomas Guinzburg died in Manhattan at age 84 on September 8,2010, due to complications of heart bypass surgery.
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Thomas Guinzburg was survived by a companion of 15 years, Victoria Anstead, two granddaughters, a daughter, producer Kate Guinzburg and a son, author Michael Guinzburg, from his first wife, actress Rita Gam, whom he married in 1956.