Liebling was born into a well-off family in Manhattan's Upper East Side, where his father worked in New York's fur industry. His mother was from San Francisco, Anna Adelson Slone. After early schooling in New York, Liebling was admitted to Dartmouth College in the fall of 1920. He left Dartmouth without graduating, later claiming he was "thrown out for missing compulsory chapel attendance". He then enrolled in the School of Journalism at Columbia University. After finishing there, he began his career as a journalist at the
Evening Bulletin of Providence, Rhode Island. He worked briefly in the sports department of the
New York Times, from which he supposedly was fired for listing the name "Ignoto" (Italian for "unknown") as the referee in results of games.
In 1926, Liebling's father asked if he would like to suspend his career as a journalist to study in Paris for a year.
- I sensed my father's generous intention, Liebling replied, and, fearing that he might change his mind, I told him that I didn't feel I should go, since I was indeed thinking of getting married. "The girl is ten years older than I am," I said, "and Mother might think she is kind of fast, because she is being kept by a cotton broker from Memphis, Tennessee, who only comes North once in a while. But you are a man of the world, and you understand that a woman can't always help herself...." Within the week, I had a letter of credit on the Irving Trust for two thousand dollars, and a reservation on the old Caronia for late in the summer, when the off-season rates would be in effect. [Source: The New Yorker, March 29, 2004, p. 54.] Liebling later wrote that the unsuitable proposed marriage was a fiction intended less to swindle his father than to cover his own pride at being the recipient of such generosity. [Source: Liebling, A.J., "Between the Meals, an Appetite for Paris", Library of Congress Catalg Card Number 85-73123, ISBN 978-0-86547-236-5 and ISBN 0-86547-236-X, p. 63.]
Thus in summer 1926, Liebling sailed to Europe where he studied French medieval literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. By his own admission [Source: "Between Meals, an Appetite for Paris", see above, passim] his devotion to his studies was purely nominal, he seeing the year as a chance to absorb French life and appreciate French food. Although he stayed for little more than a year, this interval inspired a life-long love for France and the French, later renewed in his war reporting. He returned to Providence in autumn 1927 to write for the
Journal. He then moved to New York, where he proceeded to campaign for a job on Joseph Pulitzer's
New York World, which carried the work of James M. Cain and Walter Lippmann and was known at the time as 'the writer's paper.' In order to attract the attention of the city editor, James W. Barrett, Liebling hired an out-of-work Norwegian seaman to walk for three days outside the Pulitzer Building, on Park Row, wearing sandwich boards that read
Hire Joe Liebling. [Source: The New Yorker, March 29, 2004, p. 54.] (It turned out that Barrett habitually used a different entrance on another street, and never saw the sign.) He wrote for the
World (1930—31) and the
World-Telegram (1931—1935). He married Mary Anne Quinn in 1934 despite knowledge of her schizophrenia; she was often hospitalized during their marriage.
Liebling joined
The New Yorker in 1935. His best pieces from the late thirties are collected in
Back Where I Came From (1938) and
The Telephone Booth Indian (1942).
During World War II, Liebling was active as a war correspondent, filing many stories from Africa, England, and France. His war began when he flew to Europe in October 1939 to cover its early battles, lived in Paris until June 10, 1940, and then returned to the United States until July 1941, when he flew to Britain. He sailed to Algeria in November 1942 to cover the fighting on the Tunisian front (January to May 1943). His articles from these days are collected in
The Road Back to Paris (1944). He participated in the Normandy landings on D Day, and he wrote a memorable piece concerning his experiences on a landing craft. He afterwards spent two months in Normandy and Brittany, and was with the Allied forces when they entered Paris. He wrote afterwards: "For the first time in my life and probably the last, I have lived for a week in a great city where everybody was happy." Liebling was awarded the Cross of the Légion d'honneur by the French government for his war reporting.
Following the war he returned to regular magazine fare and for many years after he wrote a
New Yorker monthly feature called "Wayward Press", in which he analyzed the US press. Liebling was also an avid fan of boxing, horse racing and food, and frequently wrote about these subjects. In 1947 he published
The Wayward Pressman, a collection of his writings from
The New Yorker and other publications. During the late forties, he vigorously criticized the House Un-American Activities Committee, became friends with Alger Hiss, divorced his first wife, and married Lucille Spectorsky in 1949. (He was later to divorce again, and marry author Jean Stafford in 1959.)
In 1961, Liebling published
The Earl of Louisiana, originally published as a series of articles in
The New Yorker in which he covered the trials and tribulations of the governor of Louisiana, Earl K. Long, the younger brother of the Louisiana politician Huey Long.
Liebling died on December 28, 1963, and was buried in the Green River Cemetery, East Hampton, New York.
