JULIA CHILD gave nearly all her personal and professional papers to the Schlesinger Library at Harvard; and in those dozens of cartons I found most of the material for the facts, inferences, and quotations in this book. The library also holds the papers of Avis DeVoto, whose correspondence provided details on the publishing of Mastering the Art of French Cooking as well as other insights into Julia’s life and times.
Among secondary sources, the most important to me was Noel Riley Fitch’s Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child (Doubleday, 1997), which I drew on especially in describing Julia’s childhood in California, her education, and her life just after college. Sisterhood of Spies: The Women of the OSS, by Elizabeth P. McIntosh (Naval Institute Press, 1998), supplied information on Julia’s wartime experiences. Hundreds of journalists interviewed Julia over the years, but the most substantive articles remain the Time cover story (November 25, 1966) and the profile by Calvin Tomkins in The New Yorker (December 23, 1974). I made use of both, and occasionally of other newspaper and magazine stories as well.
To describe and quote from Julia’s television programs, I used notes and transcripts in the Schlesinger archives, and the DVDs of The French Chef produced by WGBH Boston Video.
I’m sorry that the Penguin Lives format does not include footnotes, but researchers who would like to track down specific references are invited to write to me care of the publisher.