Betty Prashker, publisher of the feminist classics 'Sexual Politics' and 'Backlash,' dies at age 99

NEW YORK (AP) — Betty Prashker, a pioneering editor of the 20th century who as one of the first women with the power to acquire books published such classics as Kate Millett's “Sexual Politics” and Susan Faludi's “Backlash" and helped oversee the careers of Jean Auel, Dominick Dunne and Erik Larson, among others, died July 30 at age 99.

Prashker died at a family home in Alford, Massachusetts, according to her daughter, Lucy Prashker, who cited no specific cause of death. At various times, Prashker held executive positions at Crown and Doubleday, both now divisions of Penguin Random House.

“Without Betty, there would have been no Crown Publishing as we know it," a Penguin Random House executive vice president and publisher and former Crown publisher Tina Constable said in a statement Friday. "I am just one of many colleagues who benefited greatly from her experience, and from her unwaveringly championing advancement and higher pay for women in publishing.”

Born Betty Arnoff in New York City and a graduate of Vassar College, Prashker was a longtime bookworm, storyteller and tennis player whose life and career mirrored those of many women after World War II. She started out as a reader-receptionist at Doubleday in 1945, married labor lawyer Herbert Prashker in 1950 (they divorced in 1974) and took off the next decade to raise their three children. With the help of the emerging feminist movement of the 1960s, she returned to work and became an associate publisher. She had initially been turned down by Doubleday, in the early 1960s, but a few years later was unexpectedly asked to lunch by Editor-in Chief Ken McCormick.