In his autobiography, All Out!, Ellis writes about John Ciardi, the editor of his 1954 book The American Sexual Tragedy. Ellis agreed with many of Ciardi’s suggestions–some of his detailed editorial notes are on jealousy. Ellis mentions that Ciardi was "neither his therapist nor a political thought…" (All Out!, pp. 474) Ciardi at that time was not only the executive editor at Twayne Publishers, Inc., but a well respected poet and in the process of completing his translation of one of the most popular versions of Dante’s Inferno in the twentieth century. Ironically, Ciardi’s poetic sensibilities gave him a much deeper insight into all facets of romantic love and especially jealousy.
Ciardi provided a corrective to Ellis’s false notion that "fiction writers deliberately teach jealousy" but rather that they "are simply reporting society. Can it not as easily be said that people teach authors to write about jealousy." (Box 118, folder 8, Ciardi, Notes on chapter 6: Jealousy, undated)
John Ciardi’s comments illustrate the editorial process at its finest of which more later.
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