Lillian Ross (born June 8, 1918) is an American journalist and author who has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1945. She was born in Syracuse, New York, the daughter of Louis and Edna (Rosenson) Ross. With the exception of her memoir Here but Not Here, about her relationship with William Shawn, she has been extremely reluctant to make the details of her life public. In her writing she makes the narrator as invisible as she can. Her birth date is unconfirmed, but in a May 7, 1998 New York Times article by Janny Scott, Shawn is said to have been about 20 years her senior.
Ross departed from the rules regarding her private life in personal comments in The Talk of the Town following the death of J. D. Salinger, making her position as narrator clear and including information about her long friendship with Salinger and photographs of Salinger and his family with her family, including her adopted son, Erik.
The "Argonauts" by Lillian Ross, George Whitman, Joe Wershba, Helen Ross and Mel Fiske, Modern Age Books, New York, 1940
Portrait of Hemingway (originally published as a "Profile" in the New Yorker, May 13, 1950; Simon & Schuster (New York City), 1961. (Also included in Reporting.)
Picture (account of the making of the film The Red Badge of Courage, originally published in the New Yorker), Rinehart (New York City), 1952, with foreword by Anjelica Huston, Anchor Books (New York City), 1993. (Also included in Reporting.)
(With sister, Helen Ross) The Player: A Profile of an Art (interviews), Simon & Schuster, 1962, Limelight Editions, 1984.
Vertical and Horizontal (short stories), Simon & Schuster, 1963.
Reporting (articles originally published in the New Yorker, including "The Yellow Bus," "Symbol of All We Possess," "The Big Stone," "Terrific," "El Unico Matador," "Portrait of Hemingway," and "Picture"), Simon & Schuster, 1964, with new introduction by the author, Dodd (New York City), 1981.
Adlai Stevenson, Lippincott (Philadelphia), 1966.
Talk Stories (sixty stories first published in "The Talk of the Town" section of the New Yorker, 1958—65), Simon & Schuster, 1966.
Reporting Two, Simon & Schuster, 1969.
Moments with Chaplin, Dodd, 1980.
Takes: Stories from "The Talk of the Town", Congdon & Weed (New York City), 1983.
Here but Not Here: A Love Story (memoir), Random House, 1998.
"Reporting Back: Notes on Journalism", Counterpoint (New York), 2002.