{"bio": {"type": "/type/text", "value": "American editor, writer and co-founder of Story Magazine\r\n\r\nMarried to writer and editor Whit Burnett from 1930 to 1942.\r\n\r\nBorn: 21 March 1897 in Boston, Massachusetts\r\nDied: 5 September 1977 in Northampton, Massachusetts\r\n\r\n[link text][1]\r\n\r\n\r\n----------\r\n\r\nMARTHA FOLEY DIES; EDITOR AND TEACHER\r\n-------------------------------------\r\n\r\nBy Wolfgang Saxon\r\nSept. 7, 1977\r\n\r\n\r\nCredit...The New York Times Archives\r\nSee the article in its original context from\r\nSeptember 7, 1977, Page 55B\r\n[link text][2]\r\n\r\nMartha Foley, editor of \u201cThe Best American Short Stories\u201d 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.\r\n\r\nA writer and teacher at Columbia University, Miss Foley edited the annual short\u2010story anthologies for 35 years, beginning in 1941. She also was the cofounder of Story magazine, co\u2010editor of The Story Press from 1931 to 1942 and editor of \u201cFifty Best American Short Stories, 1915\u20101965,\u201d and \u201c200 Years of Great American Short Stories,\u201d published in 1975.\r\n\r\nMiss 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.\r\n\r\nUntil 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.\r\n\r\nIn choosing stories for the annual collections, Miss Foley explained, she would pick those \u201cthat seem best to me.\u201d\r\n\r\n###**Method of Selection**###\r\n\r\n\u201cThere are 30 stories in the book\u2014there were 100 stories that I wanted to use,\u201d Miss Foley said. \u201cI 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.\u201d\r\n\r\nHer method prompted Francis Hackett to write in a 1944 book review in The New York Times:\r\n\r\n> \u201cOne 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.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe selected stories, Mr. Hackett went on, \u201care 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.\u201d Miss Foley, he added, \u201cis no faddist.\u201d\r\n\r\nBorn 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\u2010editors of The Story Press.\r\n\r\n###**Editors\u2019 Picks**###\r\n\r\n\u201cFifty Best American Short Stories\u201d was published by Houghton Mifflin Company in 1965 to mark the 50th anniversary of the yearly anthologies. \u201c200 Years of great American Short Stories\u201d was edited by Miss Foley and issued by the same publisher to mark the American Bicentennial.\r\n\r\n###**Was Working on Memoirs**###\r\n\r\nAt her death, Miss Foley was working on a manuscript of a \u201cBook of Memoirs.\u201d According to the publisher, W. W. Norton and Company, it remained incomplete.\r\n\r\n###**One of her practices as a teacher was not to grade.**###\r\n\r\n\u201cI couldn't tolerate grading writers,\u201d she once said. \u201cYou know. Faulkner got a D at the University of Mississippi. Robert Sherwood couldn't get through freshman English at Harvard. And poor James Thurber\u2014where did he go? Oberlin, was it?\u2014he couldn't get through botany.\u201d\r\n\r\nMiss 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.\r\n\r\n\u201cWriters need encouragement,\u201d she said in a 1966 interview. \u201cI don't tolerate destructive criticism. In the class, we try to be honest, we try to be critical. But no hostility\u2014no, no, no.\u201d\r\n\r\nMiss Foley is survived by a half brother, Francis Foley.\r\n\r\n\r\n----------\r\n\r\n\r\n  [1]: https://books.discogs.com/credit/633102-martha-foley\r\n  [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/07/archives/martha-foley-dies-editor-and-teacher-issued-the-best-american-short.html"}, "name": "Martha Foley", "links": [{"url": "https://www.nytimes.com/1977/09/07/archives/martha-foley-dies-editor-and-teacher-issued-the-best-american-short.html", "type": {"key": "/type/link"}, "title": "Obituary from The New York Times"}], "personal_name": "Martha Foley", "death_date": "5 September 1977", "alternate_names": ["Martha Burnett"], "created": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2008-04-01T03:28:50.625462"}, "photos": [10283299], "last_modified": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2020-07-28T03:50:17.178089"}, "latest_revision": 10, "key": "/authors/OL1761977A", "birth_date": "21 March 1897", "type": {"key": "/type/author"}, "revision": 10}