Tay Hohoff

Tay Hohoff's parents, Ernest Albrecht Hohoff Jr. and Anna Walter Hallock, raised her in a multi-generational Quaker home in Brooklyn, near Prospect Park.{{cite book | last = Shields | first = Charles | author-link = Charles J. Shields | title = Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee | date = April 3, 2007 | publisher = Holt Paperbacks | isbn = 978-0805083194 | page = [https://archive.org/details/mockingbird00char/page/115 115] | url = https://archive.org/details/mockingbird00char/page/115 }} She attended Brooklyn Friends, a Quaker school near her home. In 1919 she married Lewis Edgar Welsh (1888–after 1929), an architect and artist.{{cite book |url = http://www.palmspringsbum.org/genealogy/getperson.php?personID=I64078&tree=Legends |title = Ancestral Colonial Families | author = Luther W. Welsh | publisher = Lambert Moon Print Company | location = Independence, Missouri | page = 52 | date = 1928 | access-date = July 30, 2015 }}{{cite web |url = http://public.aia.org/sites/hdoaa/wiki/Wiki%20Pages/ahd1047815.aspx |title = Lewis Edgar Welsh (member 1921 - 1936) | author = The AIA Historical Directory of American Architects | publisher = The American Institute of Architects (AIA) | date = 1956 | access-date = July 30, 2015 }} They had a daughter, Anne Torrey Welsh (1922–1980) and a son, John Hallock Welsh (born 1924). The marriage ended in divorce in 1929. In 1931 she married Arthur Haviland Torrey (1894–1973), a literary agent. On June 15, 1951, her daughter, Anne Torrey Welsh, married Dr. Grady Harrison Nunn, a professor of political science at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.{{cite news |url = https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/7388088/ |title = Wedding Announcements - Page 11 | publisher = The Bridgeport Telegram | date = June 17, 1951 | access-date = July 30, 2015 }} The Nunns named their only daughter for her grandmother: Therese von Hohoff Nunn.{{cite news |url = http://obits.al.com/obituaries/birmingham/obituary.aspx?pid=161202434 |title = Obituary - Dr. Grady Harrison Nunn | publisher = The Birmingham News | date = Nov 23, 2012 | access-date = July 30, 2015 }}

Tay Hohoff was small and wiry with a deep, gravelly voice. She was a chain-smoker. She died in Manhattan.

In New York in the 1930s she opened the office of Torrey Hohoff, Press Representatives along with her husband, Arthur Haviland Torrey. During the 1930s she also worked as a book editor, first at Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, then at Bobbs-Merrill Company.{{cite book |title = Obituary - Therese von Hohoff Torrey | publisher = Publishers Weekly, Volume 205, Part 1 | page = 53 | quote = Therese von Hohoff Torrey, author and editor known professionally as Tay Hohoff, died on January 5 at her home in New York. She was 75 years old. In 1931 she married Arthur H. Torrey, with whom she opened the office, in New York, of Torrey Hohoff, Press Representatives. Also during the '30s she worked as a book editor, first at Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, then at Bobbs-Merrill. In 1942, Mrs. Torrey joined the editorial staff of J.B. Lippincott Company, in its New York office, and remained there until her retirement as a vice-president in 1973. At Lippincott she edited the books of several authors, including Zelda Popkin, Eugenia Price and Lane Kauffmann. She was also the editor of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ by Harper Lee, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1961.| date = 1974 }}

In 1942 Tay Hohoff joined J. B. Lippincott & Co., a large and well-known American publishing company. She acted as literary editor for several authors, including Harper Lee, Nicholas Delbanco, Thomas Pynchon, Eugenia Price,{{cite book | last = Price | first = Eugenia |author-link = Eugenia Price |title = Getting Through the Night: Finding Your Way After the Loss of a Loved One | date = August 12, 1986 | publisher = Ballantine Books |isbn = 978-0345341969 | page = 46 }} Zelda Popkin, Wayne Greenhaw, and Lane Kauffmann.

Hohoff contributed to a corporate history of J. B. Lippincott & Co. that was brought out in 1967 on the occasion of the firm's 175th anniversary. She retired from the firm in 1973 as a senior vice president, a senior editorial position that was rare for a woman to hold at a major publishing house at that time.

An author herself, Hohoff published A Ministry to Man in 1959.{{cite book | last = Hohoff | first = Tay |author-link = Tay Hohoff |title = A Ministry to Man: The life of John Lovejoy Elliott, a biography | publisher = Harper | location = New York | date = 1959 }} It was a biography of John Lovejoy Elliott, a social activist and humanist in early 20th-century New York who had committed his life to helping the city's underclass. The same year, Hohoff also published a children's book The Cat Who Wanted Out, with illustrations by Bogdan Grom.{{cite book | last = Hohoff | first = Tay |author-link = Tay Hohoff |title = The Cat Who Wanted Out | date = 1959 | publisher = Lippincott }}{{cite web |url = https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/tay-hohoff-3/the-cat-who-wanted-out/ |title = Kirkus Review: The Cat Who Wanted Out by Tay Hohoff | publisher = Kirkus Reviews | access-date = July 30, 2015 }} In 1973 Hohoff published a memoir, Cats and Other People.{{cite book | last = Hohoff | first = Tay |author-link = Tay Hohoff |title = Cats and Other People | date = 1973 | location= Garden City, N.Y. | publisher = Doubleday |isbn = 9780385022958 }} In 1975 the book was read by Gillian Neumann in audiobook format on cassette tape.{{cite book |title = Cats and Other People by Tay Hohoff and Gillian Neumann | publisher = WorldCat |oclc = 607221643}}

Tay Hohoff worked closely with her authors to transform their manuscripts into critically acclaimed novels through several edits and rewrites.

{{Quote box|width=17.5em|bgcolor=#FFFDBF|align=left|quote="Hohoff was a terrific editor. She would go through the manuscript and jot down little questions in the margins. From those questions, you would start questioning your own work."
—Wayne Greenhaw{{cite book | last = Shields | first = Charles | author-link = Charles J. Shields | title = Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee | date = April 3, 2007 | publisher = Holt Paperbacks | isbn = 978-0805083194 | page = [https://archive.org/details/mockingbird00char/page/130 130] | url = https://archive.org/details/mockingbird00char/page/130 }}}}

{{Quote box|width=17.5em|bgcolor=#c6dbf7|align=right|quote="I suffer from some sort of mother-complex, so that I always want to make paths smooth for the people I am fond of and of whom I have a high opinion."
—Tay Hohoff in a six-and-a-half-page typewritten letter to Edward Burlingame, executive editor of Lippincott (1969)}}

She cut Nicholas Delbanco's 1968 novel, Grasse, 3/23/66 from 500 pages to less than 200.

{{Quote box|width=17.5em|bgcolor=#FFFDBF|align=left|quote="She was closely attentive and tough, but I never felt manhandled by her."
—Nicholas Delbanco}}

When Hohoff first saw Harper Lee's manuscript in 1957, she considered it to be "more a series of anecdotes than a fully conceived novel" though "the spark of the true writer flashed in every line".

Over the course of the next two years, she guided Harper Lee until the book finally achieved its finished shape and was retitled To Kill a Mockingbird.{{cite news |url = https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/11392667/Harper-Lee-she-never-wanted-to-publish-another-book.html |title = Harper Lee: 'she never wanted to publish another book' | author = Frances Wilson | publisher = The Telegraph | date = February 5, 2015 | access-date = July 30, 2015 }}{{cite news |url = http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/11712944/The-curious-case-of-Harper-Lee.html |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150705003711/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/11712944/The-curious-case-of-Harper-Lee.html |url-status = live |archive-date = July 5, 2015 |title = Harper Lee: the inside story of the greatest comeback in literature | author = Gaby Wood | publisher = The Telegraph | date = July 3, 2015 | access-date = July 30, 2015 }}

Once during the long editorial process, Lee lost confidence in herself and threw her manuscript out her window and into the snow. When she called her editor in tears, Hohoff "told her to march outside immediately and pick up the pages".{{cite book | last = Shields | first = Charles | author-link = Charles J. Shields | title = Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee | date = April 3, 2007 | publisher = Holt Paperbacks | isbn = 978-0805083194 | page = [https://archive.org/details/mockingbird00char/page/131 131] | url = https://archive.org/details/mockingbird00char/page/131 }} The commercial and critical success of the novel led to pressure on Lee to publish a second novel{{cite news |url = https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-jun-11-bk-reynolds11-story.html |title = The escape artist | author = Susan Salter Reynolds | newspaper = LA Times | date = June 11, 2006 | access-date = July 30, 2015 }}{{cite news |url = https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/a-writers-story-the-mockingbird-mystery-480965.html |title = A writer's story: The mockingbird mystery | author = Andrew Gumbel | work = The Independent | date = June 4, 2006 | access-date = July 30, 2015 }} but Hohoff "guarded Nelle like a junkyard dog".

After their successful collaboration, Hohoff and Lee remained close. When Lee found an extra-toed kitten huddled against a pipe in the basement of her apartment building, she persuaded Hohoff and her husband to adopt him. "She knew us very well and pulled out all the right stops," Hohoff wrote in her memoir. When Hohoff died in 1974, Lee felt devastated.

In 2015, HarperCollins (US) and Heinemann (UK) published Go Set a Watchman, an early draft for To Kill A Mockingbird. Therese Nunn, Hohoff's granddaughter, said that it was disrespectful to her grandmother's work and legacy that the novel was published after only a light edit, considering the effort that went into changing and polishing To Kill A Mockingbird.{{cite news |url = https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11737274/To-Kill-A-Mockingbird-editor-would-be-dismayed-at-decision-to-publish-new-Harper-Lee-novel.html |title = To Kill A Mockingbird editor would be dismayed at decision to publish new Harper Lee novel | author = Anita Singh and David Millward | publisher = The Telegraph | date = July 13, 2015 | access-date = July 30, 2015 }}

Jonathan Mahler of the New York Times compared the two books and praised Hohoff's large role "in reconceiving the story from a dark tale of a young woman's disillusionment with her father's racist views, to a redemptive one of moral courage and human decency". Mark Lawson of The Guardian found Go Set a Watchman more complex but less compelling than To Kill A Mockingbird, saying that "it is hard not to feel some awe at the literary midwives who spotted, in the original conception, the greater literary sibling that existed in embryo. If the text now published had been the one released in 1960, it would almost certainly not have achieved the same greatness."{{cite news |url = https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/12/go-set-a-watchman-review-harper-lee-to-kill-a-mockingbird|title = Go Set a Watchman review – more complex than Harper Lee's original classic, but less compelling | author = Mark Lawson | work = The Guardian | date = July 13, 2015 | access-date = July 30, 2015 }} Todd Leopold of CNN wrote that "Lee's graceful, drily witty voice, at once childlike and knowing [...] isn't lost in "Watchman," but one can see the impact of having a strong editor." He concluded that "The value of a good editor cannot be overstated."{{cite news |url = https://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/14/living/feat-harper-lee-watchman-mockingbird-5-things/ |title = Harper Lee's 'Mockingbird' and 'Watchman' an intriguing comparison | author = Todd Leopold | publisher = CNN | date = July 14, 2015 | access-date = July 30, 2015 }}

{{Library resources box|about=no|by=yes|onlinebooksby=no}}

• A Ministry to Man: The life of John Lovejoy Elliott, a biography (1959)
• The Cat Who Wanted Out (1959)
• The Author and His Audience: With a Chronology of Major Events in the Publishing History of J. B. Lippincott Company. (1967) - contributing author
• Cats And Other People (1973)

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Category:1898 births

Category:1974 deaths

Category:20th-century American novelists

Category:American women novelists

Category:American book editors

Category:American literary editors

Category:Writers from Brooklyn

Category:Novelists from New York City

Category:20th-century American women writers

Category:Brooklyn Friends School alumni

Category:Memoirists from New York (state)