Barbara Epstein (August 30, 1928 – June 16, 2006) was a literary editor and a founding co-editor of the New York Review of Books.
Epstein, née Zimmerman, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, to a Jewish-American family, and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1949.
Ms. Epstein rose to prominence as the editor at Doubleday of Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl, among other books. She then worked at Dutton, McGraw-Hill and The Partisan Review. She married editor Jason Epstein in 1953, and they honeymooned in Europe, crossing on the Ile de France.
In 1963, during the newspaper strike, she and her husband, together with friends Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick, founded the biweekly magazine The New York Review of Books, which Barbara called "the paper." She and Robert B. Silvers became the editors, and she remained an editor there for 43 years.
Her husband and she were divorced in 1990; Barbara Epstein lived with journalist Murray Kempton until his death in 1997. She continued in her editing until shortly before her death.
Epstein died on June 16, 2006 of lung cancer in New York City. She was 77 years old.
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