Newly released letters reveal JD Salinger’s wariness over ‘second-rate reviewers’

Exclusive: Author asked to remove reference to his ‘Jewish-Irishness’ from book jacket of The Catcher in the Rye

He was a reclusive author, who revealed little about himself or the inspiration for his 1951 masterpiece The Catcher in the Rye. Now letters that JD Salinger wrote to his editor have come to light for the first time, offering significant insights, literary and personal.

A previously unpublished correspondence reveals the author’s intervention over how he and his novel would be presented and his unease about his writing being viewed through an ethnic or religious lens.