Erica Jong papers, 1955-2018, bulk 1965-2004

Author Erica Mann Jong was born on March 26th, 1942, in New York City and was raised on Manhattan's Upper-Westside. Her father, Seymour Mann, founded Seymour Mann Imports, a giftware and home accents store; her mother, Eda Mirsky Mann, a painter, designed many of the dolls in the Connoisseur Doll Collection sold through her husband's business. Jong, a middle child, has two sisters Susanna Mann Daou and Claudia Mann Oberweger. Jong attended the High School of Music and Art, then located on the campus of City University in Hamilton Heights, from which she graduated in 1959. The family, by all accounts, led a comfortable life.

While taking her degree at Barnard College (BA 1963) and her Masters in 18th Century English Literature at Columbia University (1965), Jong published two volumes of poetry--Fruits & Vegetables and Half-Lives. Jong entered the international literary scene with her best-selling first novel, Fear of Flying (1973), a semi-autobiographical first-person narrative depicting a woman's search for identity and fulfillment. The book, an immediate sensation, has since sold over 18 million copies and has been translated into multiple languages. The novel's protagonist, Isadora Wing, went on to star in many of Jong's subsequent novels, including How to Save Your Own Life,Parachutes & Kisses, and Any Woman's Blues. Thus far, as her official websites states, Jong has published "20 books, including eight novels, six volumes of poetry, six books of non-fiction and numerous articles" in major magazines and newspapers. Also known for her association with American writer Henry Miller, Jong wrote The Devil at Large (1993) in honor of their friendship and shared literary aesthetic.

Jong is a teacher as well as a writer and has taught courses or conducted workshops at City University of New York, the Overseas Division of the University of Maryland in Germany, Barnard College, Bennington College, Breadloaf Writers Conference, Ben Gurion University in Israel and the Salzburg Seminar in Vienna. Among her awards are the United Nations Award for Excellence in Literature, Poetry Magazine's Bess Hokin Award and France's Deauville Award for Literary Excellence.

In 1996 Jong endowed the Erica Mann Jong '63 Writing Fellows Fund at Barnard College.

Jong has been married four times: her first, and briefest marriage, was to Michael Werthman, whom she married while she was still an undergraduate; Jong and psychiatrist Allan Jong were married in 1966; in 1977 she married author Jonathan Fast with whom she had her one, and only child, also an author, Molly Miranda Fast-Jong; in 1989 Jong married attorney Kenneth David Burrows, a graduate of Brown University and Fordham University Law School, to whom she is still married.