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Vintage's managing editorial director Rowena Skelton-Wallace to retire after 37 years
Vintage’s longstanding managing editorial director Rowena Skelton-Wallace is set to retire in October 2025 after 37 years with the company. Skelton-Wallace first joined Random House in October 1988 as personal assistant to Chatto & Windus’ then managing director, Carmen Callil. Two years later she became assistant editor within the imprint’s illustrated books department.
During this period she worked with freelance copy editors, proofreaders and designers and coincided with Chatto’s integration into the division of CCV at Random House. She accumulated responsibility for other imprints and was appointed as divisional managing editorial director, and later continued in the same role in the expanded Vintage division.
Skelton-Wallace said: "When I joined Chatto & Windus in 1988, all I knew was that I wanted to work with books, preferably ‘literary’. Little did I know, aged 25, that I’d hit the jackpot, which is why, 37 years later, I’m still at Vintage, keeping the trains running on time in the managing editorial department. Looking back on my career, personal highlights include receiving letters and phone calls from Laurie Lee and Ted Hughes, working with Alastair Campbell on his first volume of diaries, with Dennis Enright on a new translation of Proust, and working with industry greats – Carmen Callil, Alison Samuel, Jenny Uglow, Suzanne Dean, Clara Farmer, Rachel Cugnoni, Dan Franklin and Robin Robertson, and innumerable freelancers (the backbone of publishing), many of whom also became friends. 2024 was a stellar year for Vintage so, although I will miss everyone and all the amazing books, it will be really lovely to go out on a high."
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In her 37 years, she played a crucial role on numerous publications, including the 20-volume Complete Orwell, David Kynaston’s four-volume The City of London, Isaiah Berlin’s three-volume letters, and the diaries and letters of Christopher Isherwood. She has worked with authors including Iris Murdoch, Angela Carter, AS Byatt and Toni Morrison, and is the co-author of Grammar for Grown-Ups, published by Square Peg in 2012.
Ed Grande, finance and commercial director, Vintage, said: "Rowena has made an enormous, almost immeasurable contribution to Vintage’s publishing, from AS Byatt’s 1990 Booker win for Possession to Samantha Harvey’s 2024 Booker Prize-winner Orbital. She and her team have helped guide many thousands of Vintage titles through to publication, ensuring they meet the highest standards of quality and providing a critical point of connection between editors, authors and our freelancers. Put simply, the scale and ambition of Vintage’s publishing over these years would not have been possible without the co-ordination, dedication and care that Rowena has provided, and she is beloved by her team and the many authors, editors, freelancers, copy-editors, proofreaders and designers that have had the good fortune to work with her."
