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Obituaries|Ann Harris, Who Edited a Stack of Best Sellers, Dies at 99
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/obituaries/ann-harris-dead.html
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Her hits included “The Exorcist” and “The Thorn Birds,” as well as autobiographies of Betty Ford and Warren Buffett.
Aug. 3, 2025Updated 3:22 p.m. ET
In 1969, after a career writing comedic novels and screenplays, William Peter Blatty wrangled a $10,000 advance to write a decidedly unfunny book, “The Exorcist.”
He wrote a manuscript so scary, he would later tell a British newspaper, that his secretary “was too spooked to work on it when she was alone in the house.”
Before the novel could be published, though, the finer points of plot, character and demonic possession had to be shaped by an editor. The job went to the fastidious Ann Schakne Harris, who in the 1960s was among a group of women to gain recognition for their burnishing skills at Manhattan’s publishing houses.
For six weeks, Mr. Blatty and Ms. Harris bivouacked at a hotel in New York to sculpt the novel that became the defining entry in a hybrid genre that The New York Times called “theological horror.”
“The Exorcist,” published in 1971 by Harper & Row (now HarperCollins), became one of the best-selling novels of the decade and sold 13 million copies in the United States. Mr. Blatty died in 2017.
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