Judith Jones, cookbook editor who brought Julia Child and others to the table, dies at 93

By Joe Yonan August 2 at 9:46 AM

Judith Jones, the legendary editor who rescued Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl” from a publisher’s reject pile and later introduced readers to the likes of Julia Child and a host of other influential cookbook authors, died Aug. 2 at her summer home in Walden, Vt. She was 93.

The cause was complications from Alzheimer’s disease, said her step-daughter Bronwyn Dunne.

Mrs. Jones helped open a world of cuisines to a public previously bound by convenience foods, and her impact on cookbook publishing, home cooking and the American palate was monumental.

Beginning in the 1950s, she followed her own curiosity and her instincts for what readers wanted to cook and needed to know, and she championed the work of unknown authors who became icons and whose books became classics.

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