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4th Estate signs Joan Didion's book found in cabinet three years after author's death
A new book by Joan Didion will be published by 4th Estate following the posthumous discovery of the manuscript.
Discovered in a portable filing cabinet next to Didion’s desk after her death in 2022, Notes to John is a journal in which she describes sessions with a psychiatrist. The reports are addressed to her husband, John Gregory Dunne. The book will be published in hardcover, e-book and audio on April 22nd 2025.
Notes to John was acquired by publishing director Kishani Widyaratna in the UK and Commonwealth territories, excluding Canada, from Claire Paterson Conrad of Janklow & Nesbit UK.
The book will be published simultaneously with Knopf in the US where it was acquired by Jordan Pavlin, Knopf EVP, publisher and editor-in-chief. International rights sales are unfolding rapidly including deals with Grasset (France), Gyldendal (Denmark), Ullstein (Germany), Il Saggiatore (Italy), De Arbeiderspers (The Netherlands), Grupa Wydawnicza Relacja (Poland), Infinito Particular (Portugal), PRH Spain and Natur Och Kultur (Sweden), with more underway.
Widyaratna said: “At 4th Estate we are immensely proud to be Joan Didion’s long-time UK publisher, and it is a great honour to be bringing this extraordinary new book to readers. Notes to John offers us a deeply moving and astonishingly intimate portrait of the person behind the revered literary persona, and rare insight into the genesis of some Didion’s most treasured works. This is an unmissable publication from one of the most iconic writers of our time.”
Notes to John opens in December 1999, shortly after Didion began seeing the psychiatrist. As she wrote to a friend, her family had been having “a rough few years”. For several months, she recorded the sessions with the psychiatrist in meticulous detail.
“The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana,” 4th Estate said.
“The subjects evolved to include her work, which she was finding difficult to maintain for sustained periods. There were discussions about her own childhood – misunderstandings and lack of communication with her mother and father, her early tendency to anticipate catastrophe – and the question of legacy, or, as she put it, ‘what it’s been worth’.”
The hardback cover features a portrait of Joan Didion in her office taken by photographer Annie Leibovitz.
The New York Public Library acquired the papers of Didion and Dunne in 2023. The collection will open to the public on March 26th 2025.
