Letters to his editor show JD Salinger feared being portrayed as 'Jewish-Irish'

He was a reclusive author who revealed little about himself or the inspiration for his 1951 masterpiece, The Catcher in the Rye.

- Dalya Alberge

Now letters JD Salinger wrote to his editor have come to light, offering significant insights, literary and personal.

A previously unpublished correspondence reveals the author's intervention over how he and his novel would be presented and his unease about the possibility of his writing being viewed through an ethnic or religious lens.

When Salinger emerged in the early 1950s as one of the most influential literary voices of his generation, one detail was conspicuously absent from his public persona - his Jewish and Irish Catholic heritage. That was not accidental, the letters show.

In the final stages of production for The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger asked his editor, John Woodburn, to remove his "Jewish-Irishness" from the book jacket. He wrote: "I don't know that I'd like to have that JewishIrish business slapped on the jacket...

Surely it's as bad to advertise worthy information as it is to withhold it - if it's catchy, that is.