Thomas H. Guinzburg

Thomas Henry Guinzburg (March 30, 1926 – September 8, 2010) 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.

Guinzburg was born on March 30, 1926, in Manhattan. His father, Harold K. Guinzburg, the publisher and co-founder of Viking Press, gave him a manuscript copy of The Story of Ferdinand when he was nine years old. Guinzburg enjoyed the book so much that it convinced his father to publish the book and ended up selling four million copies, giving the young Guinzburg his first inkling that he might have a career in the publishing business. He attended the Hotchkiss School and served in the United States Marine Corps, where he received the Purple Heart for action on Iwo Jima. After completing his military service he attended Yale University, where he was a member of Skull and Bones as well as the managing editor of the Yale Daily News at the same time that William F. Buckley, Jr. was editor.

Guinzburg visited Paris in the 1950s after graduating from Yale, joining other literatti such as Donald Hall, Peter Matthiessen, George Plimpton and William Styron. He joined with Matthiessen and Plimpton in 1953 to establish The Paris Review, an English-language literary magazine for "the good writers and good poets, the non-drumbeaters and non-axe grinders. So long as they're good" that is known for its author interviews about their writing craft and for helping launch the careers of such authors as T. Coraghessan Boyle, Jack Kerouac, V. S. Naipaul, Adrienne Rich, Philip Roth and Mona Simpson. Guinzburg was chosen as the Paris Review's first managing editor, as he was the only one with and prior publishing experience, building on his time at the Yale Daily News. Editor Robert B. Silvers of The New York Review of Books cited Guinzburg's "marvelous combination of idealist and realist" in which "He was always encouraging The Review not to be deterred from discovering young writers of quality" while always maintaining "a grasp of the really rough details of commercial publishing."

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