Robert Giroux, an editor who introduced and nurtured some of the major authors of the 20th century and who rose to join one of the nation’s most distinguished publishing houses as a partner, making it Farrar, Straus & Giroux, died Friday in Tinton Falls, N.J. He was 94. He died in his sleep at Seabrook Village, an independent-living facility, a niece, Kathleen Mulvehill, said.

If the flamboyant Roger Straus presented the public face of Farrar, Straus, Mr. Giroux, as editor-in-chief, was its quiet mover, working behind the scenes to shape its list of books and establishing himself as the gold standard of literary taste. The publisher Charles Scribner Jr., in his memoir, In the Company of Writers: A Life in Publishing (1991), wrote, Giroux is a great man of letters, a great editor, and a great publisher.

He was originally attracted to editing while a student at Columbia University, when he took an honors seminar with Raymond Weaver. "Weaver was the first biographer of Herman Melville, and the first person to read the manuscript of Billy Budd, in 1919," Mr. Giroux told the poet Donald Hall in a an interview for The New York Times Book Review in 1980. "This left a mark on me. I thought, 'Imagine discovering a literary masterpiece.'"

How many masterpieces Mr. Giroux discovered will be for the future to decide. As he himself insisted, it can take decades for a book to become a classic. Still, one of the first books he edited is now on any list of the century's best, Edmund Wilson's work on 19th-century socialist thinkers, To the Finland Station (1940); Mr. Giroux judged the manuscript to be nearly flawless.

Self Publish Your Book For Less!

Your Ad Could Be Here!