Editor Thomas B(oss) Congdon, Jr., died 23 December 2008 of Parkinson’s Disease and congestive heart failure. Born 17 March 1931 in New London, Connecticut, he was “a meticulous, old-fashioned line editor who wrote long, detailed memos in response to manuscripts” (according to The New York Times), and nurtured many big, best-selling books.
Congdon’s first major success was Peter Benchley’s Jaws in 1974, which he edited while working at Douubleday. He also edited A. Scott Berg’s biography, Maxwell Perkins: Editor of Genius, which won a National Book Award in 1980.
Congdon graduated from Yale and then served in the US Navy aboard the battleships Wisconsin and Iowa after the Korean War. Later, he studied journalism at Columbia, and was an editor at The Saturday Evening Post before moving into book publishing in 1968. He was an editor with Harper & Row, Doubleday, and E.P. Dutton (where he was editor in chief) in the 1970s before starting his own company (first called Congdon & Lattes, and then Congdon & Weed) in 1979. After his own company’s bankruptcy, he went back to working for others, including William Morrow, where he edited David Halberstam’s The Reckoning (his huge book about the auto industry) in 1986.
Congdon is the third Jaws-related death this year, following actor Roy Scheider (who starred in the movie) in February, and shark fisherman Frank Mundus (who was the inspiration for Captain Quint) in September.
He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Constance, a brother and a sister, two daughters, and three granddaughters.