Phillips, Christopher (Christopher Joel), 1950-

Christopher Phillips was born on December 19, 1950, in Manhattan into an upper-middle-class assimilated Jewish family. He attended private schools (Collegiate in New York and, briefly, Eton and Mill Hill in England) and was involved with church music as a teenager. He graduated from Yale in 1972 (B.A., Chinese history). He was active in the gay liberation movement beginning with the founding of the first Yale gay group in October 1969; he soon became the first publicly gay man in Yale history. He worked full time at the Gay Community Services Center in Los Angeles in its early days (1973-75), and lived with other Center gay activists in the Highland Park Collective. His career as an editor has included positions at Architectural Digest (Los Angeles, 1977-81); Asiaweek magazine (Hong Kong, 1981); and The Telegraph Sunday Magazine (London, 1982-83). He worked for Virgin Records in Edinburgh in its early days (1972-73), where he also did gay organizing. He lived in Taiwan as a student in 1975-76. From 1983 to 1986, he was very involved in the Jewish Baal Tshuvah (Newly Orthodox) movement in London and in Israel, where he lived and studied at an Orthodox yeshiva. From 1987 to 1991 he ran his own co-edition publishing house in London, and clients included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis at Doubleday. His first book was produced with Man Ray's widow, who was a close friend. Since 1991 he has been an editor at The New York Times and has had a practice in homeopathic medicine in Manhattan.

From the guide to the Christopher Phillips papers, 1950-2005, 1950-1991, (Manuscripts and Archives)

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