Drue Heinz, DBE (born Doreen Mary English; March 8, 1915 – March 30, 2018) was a British-born American actress, philanthropist, arts patron, and socialite.[1][2] She was the publisher of the literary magazine The Paris Review (1993 to 2007), co-founded Ecco Press, founded literary retreats and endowed the Drue Heinz Literature Prize among others.[3] She was married to H. J. Heinz II, president of Heinz.
Biography
Born Doreen Mary English in Norfolk, England to Patrick Harry English, an army officer, and Edith English (née Wodehouse),[3] she first married John Mackenzie Robertson with whom she had one daughter, Wendy Mackenzie. Her second husband was Dale Wilford Maher, the first Secretary of the U. S. Legation in Johannesburg, South Africa (died 1948).[4] They had a daughter Marigold Randall. In 1953, Drue became the third wife of H. J. Heinz II (1908–87), then president of Heinz company and heir to the Heinz fortune.[3] With Heinz she became the stepmother of John Heinz (1938–91) who later became a PennsylvaniaUnited States Senator.[3]
The Heinz home in Pittsburgh was called "Goodwood", in Sewickley Heights.[3] They also had an apartment in New York's Upper East Side, and a winter retreat in Hobe Sound, Florida.[3] For many years, their British home was Ascot Place at North Ascot in Winkfield, Berkshire.[3] Heinz would buy houses, restore them and turn them into writers' retreats.[3] She purchased Hawthornden Castle, a medieval fortress outside Edinburgh, Scotland and made it into a place for writers to live and work called the Hawthornden Literary Retreat. The Heinz Italian home, called Villa Maresi, was on Lake Como in the town of Griante.[2] She called it "Casa Ecco", and writers would go there for discussions. "She was very close to Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Andy Warhol, Harold Pinter and Antonia Fraser," according to Daniel Halpern, founder of Ecco Press.[3]
Of her character, Teresa Heinz said "Drue was a very private person but she came to know an amazing group of people in her life. She was smart and passionate and deeply interested in art, literature, and especially poetry."[2] Of her reputation, Jonathan Galassi, President, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, said
"Drue Heinz was the great literary philanthropist of our time. The institutions she created and/or supported – among them The Drue Heinz Prize, Antaeus, The Ecco Press and The Paris Review in the United States and the Hawthornden Prize and Hawthornden Castle in the U.K., to name only a few – are monuments to the seriousness and long-standing of her commitments; but it was her personal involvement, her long friendships with J. Laughlin, George Plimpton, and countless writers and editors, that made her generosity so impactful."[2]
Death
Heinz died on March 30, 2018, at age 103, at Hawthornden Castle[6] in Lasswade, Scotland.[7][8]
Philanthropic and literary career
In 1971, with the encouragement of her friend James Laughlin, she co-founded Ecco Press.[2] In addition to the literary magazine Antaeus, which she funded from 1970 to its closing in 1994, Ecco published many out of print books, and was one of the leading US publishers of poetry.[2]
Heinz began supporting the University of Pittsburgh's fiction prize in 1980. In 1995, she endowed the prize with a $1 million gift at which point it became known as the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. The prize publishes collections of short fiction through the University of Pittsburgh Press.[3] "The revenue from that million has exceeded the needs of the press for publication and promotion of the Heinz books so it keeps growing," said Ed Ochester, editor of the press in 2018.[3] Heinz also endowed the Hawthornden Prize for many years.[2]
When the archives of The Paris Review were sold to the Morgan Library in 1999, Heinz paid the purchase price of $850,000.[3] Heinz was close friends with the founder, George Plimpton, and was herself publisher of the Review from 1993 to 2007.[3] Heinz was among those who helped found the paper in 1953 and over the years help fund it.[3]
