Abstract

Literature's Candida

One recent Tuesday, members of the literary old guard gathered at the Church of All Souls on Manhattan, New York City's Upper East Side to bid final farewell to one of their secret society and to be reminded that the literary agent Candida Donadio, who had died some weeks earlier, was always clear in her devotion to the written word and the men and women who make it. Candida's connection to her authors was devotional both in the sense of requiring an absolute loyalty and in that there was an incense of faith and ritual that surrounded her. The anecdotes at All Souls were revelatory of how her values increasingly stood out in a changing landscape. Knopf associate publisher Vicky Wilson recalled that Candida used to say sometimes that she wanted to become a Carmelite nun.