Martha Foley

American editor, writer and co-founder of Story Magazine

Married to writer and editor Whit Burnett from 1930 to 1942.

Born: 21 March 1897 in Boston, Massachusetts
Died: 5 September 1977 in Northampton, Massachusetts

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MARTHA FOLEY DIES; EDITOR AND TEACHER

By Wolfgang Saxon
Sept. 7, 1977

Credit...The New York Times Archives
See the article in its original context from
September 7, 1977, Page 55B
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Martha Foley, editor of “The Best American Short Stories” and a powerful force in the development of that American literary metier, died Monday of heart disease at Cooley Dickenson Hospital in Northampton, Mass. She was 80 years old and lived in Northampton.

A writer and teacher at Columbia University, Miss Foley edited the annual short‐story anthologies for 35 years, beginning in 1941. She also was the cofounder of Story magazine, co‐editor of The Story Press from 1931 to 1942 and editor of “Fifty Best American Short Stories, 1915‐1965,” and “200 Years of Great American Short Stories,” published in 1975.

Miss Foley started teaching the short story at Columbia University and Barnard College in 1945, after having worked as a reporter, editor and correspondent for American and foreign newspapers in the 1920's and 30's. The newspapers she worked for included The Times of London and The Paris Herald.

Until 1966, when an accident forced her to give up teaching, her popular courses at Columbia gave many an aspiring writer the opportunity to receive thorough training in the craft.

In choosing stories for the annual collections, Miss Foley explained, she would pick those “that seem best to me.”

Method of Selection

“There are 30 stories in the book—there were 100 stories that I wanted to use,” Miss Foley said. “I put the 100 stories ing [sic]. I did the best I could, but I'd hate them. Finally I selected the 30 for reprintng [sic]. I did the best I could, but I'd hate to argue a case against those I rejected.”

Her method prompted Francis Hackett to write in a 1944 book review in The New York Times:

“One of the signs of it is Miss Martha Foley's devoted selection of the best short stories. Here, as against the bright and shiny stories that go with the ads, Miss Foley has scoured all the weeklies and monthlies and quarterlies for a fresh and unmitigated individuality.”

The selected stories, Mr. Hackett went on, “are the answer, fiercely scrupulous and exacting, to the shrewd complacencies of the standard product. Arbitrary, in the nature of things, and without the inside illumination of a St. Peter, her selection may still be taken as the cream of our individual expression, or at any rate the top of the bottle.” Miss Foley, he added, “is no faddist.”

Born in Boston and educated there at Girls Latin School, Miss Foley and her husband, the late Whit Burnett, from whom she was later divorced, founded Story Magazine. They were also co‐editors of The Story Press.

Editors’ Picks

“Fifty Best American Short Stories” was published by Houghton Mifflin Company in 1965 to mark the 50th anniversary of the yearly anthologies. “200 Years of great American Short Stories” was edited by Miss Foley and issued by the same publisher to mark the American Bicentennial.

Was Working on Memoirs

At her death, Miss Foley was working on a manuscript of a “Book of Memoirs.” According to the publisher, W. W. Norton and Company, it remained incomplete.

One of her practices as a teacher was not to grade.

“I couldn't tolerate grading writers,” she once said. “You know. Faulkner got a D at the University of Mississippi. Robert Sherwood couldn't get through freshman English at Harvard. And poor James Thurber—where did he go? Oberlin, was it?—he couldn't get through botany.”

Miss Foley took a personal interest in her students and was not averse to joining them after class at the West End Bar on Broadway to reminisce about the Paris of the 1920's and its American literary colony, including James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway.

“Writers need encouragement,” she said in a 1966 interview. “I don't tolerate destructive criticism. In the class, we try to be honest, we try to be critical. But no hostility—no, no, no.”

Miss Foley is survived by a half brother, Francis Foley.