Shub, Elizabeth

Editor and translator Elizabeth “Libby” Shub was born in Vilno, Poland, the daughter of Samuel and Bessie Charney. In 1919, her family moved to the United States, where they settled in New York and her father, writing as Shmuel Niger, worked as a literary critic for the Yiddish newspaper The Day . Because her parents ran a literary salon in their home, Shub was exposed to Yiddish literature and writers from an early age. She met author Isaac Bashevis Singer when her father invited him to dinner at their house soon after Singer’s arrival in the United States in 1935, and they developed a lasting friendship.

In 1965, after her marriage to Boris Shub ended in divorce, Elizabeth Shub began working as a reader in the children’s department at Harper & Row Publishers and soon became an associate editor there. She later worked at Charles Scribner’s Sons (1966-68) and Macmillan Publishing Company (1968-75), also as an associate editor of children’s books. She became senior editor at Greenwillow Books in 1975 and retired from that position in 1996.

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