Rona Jaffe's beloved novel about 1950s NYC women in the workplace that paved the way for the #MeToo movement and iconic cultural touchstones like Sex and the City and Mad Men, now for the first time in Penguin Classics, in a 65th anniversary edition with an introduction by New Yorker staff writer Rachel Syme

When Rona Jaffe’s superb page-turner was first published in 1958, it changed contemporary fiction forever. Some readers were shocked, but millions more were electrified when they saw themselves reflected in its story of five young employees of a New York publishing company. Sixty-five years later, The Best of Everything remains touchingly—and sometimes hilariously—true to the personal and professional struggles women face in the city. There’s Ivy League Caroline, who dreams of graduating from the typing pool to an editor’s office; naïve country girl April, who within months of hitting town reinvents herself as the woman every man wants on his arm; and Gregg, the free-spirited actress with a secret yearning for domesticity. Jaffe follows their adventures with intelligence, sympathy, and prose as sharp as a paper cut.

REVIEWS

“I finally picked it up recently and was blown away by Jaffe’s sharp, fizzy writing; her pointed analysis of women’s roles and restrictions; and her matter-of-fact depiction of sexual harassment in the workplace decades before the Clarence Thomas hearings or #MeToo...I had no idea that anyone in the ’50s was writing like this.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Lively, delightful and heartbreaking… The book is not tawdry; it's terrific…‘The Best of Everything’ seized the mood of the moment and told the truth, and women by the millions devoured it. Sixty-five years later, I did, too.”
—Star Tribune

“An incredibly pleasurable and devastating novel — do yourself a favor and get a copy.”
—The Cut

Rachel Syme is a staff writer for the New Yorker who has covered fashion, style, and other cultural subjects since 2012. Her cultural criticism and reported features—which focus primarily on the intersections of women’s lives, artistic production, history, and fame—have also appeared in the Times Magazine, Elle, GQ, Grantland, New York, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and The New Republic, among other publications. She grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico and now resides in Brooklyn.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Classics (March 14, 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 496 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 014313731X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143137313
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.03 x 0.82 x 7.7 inches