“She was a narcissist who described herself beautifully.” The description of the mid 20th-century novelist Jean Rhys doesn’t apply to the author who wrote it, even if, in style and sentiment, it epitomises the publication in which it appeared – sly, aphoristic and unapologetically imperious.
Mary-Kay Wilmers published her first piece for the
London
Review of Books in 1981, two years after joining the “paper” as an editor and 11 years before she became the editor-in-chief. (She is also the owner.) Since then, the
LRB, which has a circulation of around 80,000 according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, but relies on financial support from the Wilmers family trust, has become, in its own self-description, “the pre-eminent exponent of the intellectual essay, admired around the world for its fearlessness, its range and its elegance”. On 29 January Wilmers, 82, stepped down after nearly 30 years as editor. She will be succeeded by deputy editor Jean McNicol and senior editor Alice Spawls.