Eleanor Friede (d. 2008) was an American book editor and literary agent, best known for bringing the 1970 novella ''
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
''Jonathan Livingston Seagull'', written by American author Richard Bach and illustrated with black-and-white photographs shot by Russell Munson, is a fable in novella form about a seagull who is trying to learn about life and flight, and a homi ...
'' to publication.
Friede was born Eleanor Kask in
Rochester, New York
Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in W ...
, and grew up in
Valley Stream
Valley Stream is a village in Nassau County, on Long Island, in New York, United States. The population in the Village of Valley Stream was 37,511 at the 2010 census.
The incorporated Village of Valley Stream is within the Town of Hempstead, ...
. She graduated with honors from Hofstra University and shortly thereafter went to work for World Publishing in publicity and marketing.
She married
Donald Friede
Donald is a masculine given name derived from the Gaelic name ''Dòmhnall''.. This comes from the Proto-Celtic *''Dumno-ualos'' ("world-ruler" or "world-wielder"). The final -''d'' in ''Donald'' is partly derived from a misinterpretation of the ...
, a
World Publishing
The World Publishing Company was an American publishing company. The company published genre fiction, trade paperbacks, children's literature, nonfiction books, textbooks, Bibles, and dictionaries,Macmillan in 1968 when company president Jeremiah Kaplan convinced her to become an editor. A year later she persuaded Macmillan to buy ''
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
''Jonathan Livingston Seagull'', written by American author Richard Bach and illustrated with black-and-white photographs shot by Russell Munson, is a fable in novella form about a seagull who is trying to learn about life and flight, and a homi ...
'', a fable about a seagull who breaks from his flock in search of freedom. The novella by Richard Bach sold more than three million copies in hardcover.
In 1974, Friede received her own imprint at
Delacorte Press
Dell Publishing Company, Inc. is an American publisher of books, magazines and comic books, that was founded in 1921 by George T. Delacorte Jr. with $10,000 (approx. $145,000 in 2021), two employees and one magazine title, ''I Confess'', and so ...
. Following Delacorte's purchase by Doubleday in the early 1980s she launched Eleanor Friede Books, a literary agency. One of the books published under the Delacorte Press was ''Somewhere a Cat is Waiting'', a 1976 collection of three of the author Derek Tangye's books, whose works were affectionately referred to as ''The Minack Chronicles''.
Eleanor Friede died July 14, 2008, at the age of 78.