Mary-Kay Wilmers is stepping down from her role as editor of the London Review of Books, a position she has held for almost 30 years.
Wilmers was one of the founders of the literary magazine in 1979, along with Karl Miller and Susannah Clapp, became co-editor in 1988, and has been its sole editor since 1992. In 2019, when the LRB celebrated its 40th anniversary, she was dubbed “Britain’s most influential editor” by the New York Times.
Wilmers will continue at the paper as consulting editor, with the LRB’s deputy editor Jean McNicol and senior editor Alice Spawls succeeding her. McNicol has been at the magazine since 1987, when she joined as an editorial assistant, while Spawls joined the LRB as an editorial intern in 2011.
“The succession has been long in the planning and I’m very proud to be handing over the editorship to two such talented women,” said Wilmers, who is 82. “I’ll be continuing to do my bit as consulting editor.”
Wilmers’ home life was documented in Love, Nina, the bestselling memoir by her former nanny, the author Nina Stibbe. In the 2016 BBC adaptation, Wilmers was portrayed by actor Helena Bonham Carter.
“A) Oh, no, it’s the end of an era. B) I hope people aren’t going to annoy her by saying ‘end of an era’ and going on about it,” Stibbe said. “People have said the LRB is her life. It isn’t. It’s her job, and she’s very thorough.”
Stibbe, who has remained friends with Wilmers since first meeting her in 1982, said she tried to provide ideas for the LRB while nannying: “I might begin on Virginia Woolf and she might say, ‘Sorry, I’m about to watch Match of the Day’. One time I raved about The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole by new writer, Sue Townsend. And she said, ‘If you like it that much, review it for the paper?’ I declined, thinking, ‘Do your own homework!’”
In 2014, the Observer said that under Wilmers, the LRB, which had a circulation of more than 78,000 in 2019, had become “a highly regarded publication with an influence that extends far beyond the rarefied world of small-circulation literary magazines”.
Published twice a month, the LRB has included among its contributors names including Christopher Hitchens, Seamus Heaney, Angela Carter and Hilary Mantel. Wilmers has said in the past that she sees “the paper”, as she calls it – a mix of book reviews, arts criticism and long-form essays – as an antidote to the sameness seen elsewhere in the media.
“Newspapers say the same thing over and over again and we’re all horrified and collectively up in arms and there’s normally more than one side to something,” she told the Observer in 2014. “So if you hear somebody saying something coherent and intelligent that’s not totally out of order, it’s interesting to read it.”
Last year, she explained that the LRB had endured “because we have a sense of humour that you can see without it necessarily being declared. We’re not po-faced, as it were.”
Andrew O’Hagan, a longtime contributor to the magazine and a close friend of Wilmers, called it “a huge moment”.
“Mary-Kay has been the best literary editor of her generation,” he said. “She’s an international treasure, not only because she has kept the British essay alive and growing, but because she has driven reportage and memoir-writing into the digital age. Very quietly, for decades, she has been a guiding light in the literary life of this country, and one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever known … she’s always been great to write for – more of a dance than a solo flight, less of a task than an education.”
In a statement, Spawls and McNicol said: “The LRB is the best paper in the world, thanks to Mary-Kay, and we intend to keep it that way. We’ve never wanted to work anywhere else, and, indeed, neither of us ever has.”