How long did you work at John Wiley & Sons?
Seven…seven lean years! It’s funny the way the…to come back.
When exactly did you graduate?
‘60, 1960.
And when did you marry?
‘64.
And your first husband was…?
Ed McDougal, and I married him in 1964. And Will, my son, was born in 1968, and I left Ed in 1970, at which point the women’s movement had begun to take on steam.
And you met him in New York?
Yeah.
Was he also in the same industry?
No. He worked at Equitable Life Insurance.
And after 1970, when is it that you met Jim?
I think I met him in ‘78? Yeah. I moved back to Charleston in ‘77, so…‘78, ‘79, something like that.
So in that break between ‘70 and ‘78, were you still in New York at that time? You said you had seven lean years; where were you working during that period of time?
Then I moved into trade publishing, which was a lot more fun. I started at Harcourt Brace, where I worked on the first textbook of science fiction ever published. We had a wonderful big editor named Mr. Pullen, and it was his project, and I said, “Can I work on it? Please, please ?” And I did; it was fun. And from there, I went to World Publishing, and I’ve forgotten what they hired me to do…oh, run the copyeditors. And then it was…having one paroxysm after another. And they put me in charge of children’s books, having fired a very distinguished children’s book department, and it was nuts, which is of course a wonderful learning opportunity. And from there, I went freelance for a while, living in downtown Brooklyn, and realizing Will was, actually, turning four—I didn’t have any health insurance, and neither did he, and maybe it was time to stop doing freelance and get a corporate job. And somebody had just left Grosset & Dunlap, and I said, “Well, who’s replacing you?” and he said, “I can’t even recommend that job to a friend, Harriet.” I said, “Nevertheless…” and went and interviewed and got it, and that was where I met Tom Doherty, when I was hired as editor for Tempo Books. But then I began to get angry, because not long after I started working, the President of Grosset said in my presence, “Thank God we’ve got her instead of Dummy _____!” who was my friend I was replacing, and he had been making fifteen thousand a year, and I was making eleven. “Let me see if I can fight to get a raise to twelve,” because I was paying six thousand for child care. Daycare just didn’t exist back then. And I began to get pissed off.
What did you do?
I put my head down and worked. (laughter) And began to think about how I could get out, and it finally came…what did happen? It was a big mess of family stuff and all, but I could move back to Charleston if I could figure out how to make a buck, and I’d met a guy named Richard Gallen who had been general counsel at Dell, and he had figured out how to tax shelter books, and needed books to tax shelter—there’s nothing crooked about this—so he said, “You find the books; I’ll give you the money to pay the advance, and see if we can’t make money together,” and I said, “I’m sorry, I can’t; my monthly nut’s too high, and I have a child to support, and no help from Ed. None, nada.” But the chance to live in the house in Charleston…my sister’s child—you don’t want to know; it was a real can of bait—and I called Dick and said, “Is your offer still good?” And he said, “Yeah, I’ll meet you for lunch tomorrow, and bring a contract.” And he did; it was double-spaced, one page. I signed it, and armed with that—and I think I had two thousand dollars in the bank—off Will and I went to Charleston! So it was a pretty wild adventure, but it worked. It had some real poor moments, I’ll tell you that.
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