Charlotte Kohler | Literary editor, 99

Charlotte Kohler, 99, who as a longtime editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review was a quiet influence on the course of 20th-century writing, died on Sept. 15 at her home in Charlottesville, Va. Dr. Kohler died a day before her 100th birthday.

The Virginia Quarterly Review was first published in 1925, and its collective table of contents is vast, encompassing high-quality fiction, poetry and literary commentary and reportage.

It has long been known for its affiliation with Southern writing. Katherine Anne Porter, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks and Reynolds Price, among many others, have been contributors. But it has always been more than a regional publication and identifies itself as "a national journal of literature and discussion."

Dr. Kohler was its sixth editor and remains its longest-serving one, taking over during World War II and holding the reins until the 50th anniversary issue in 1975.

Dr. Kohler graduated from Vassar College in 1929 and left for Europe to become a writer, returning to her native Richmond after an unproductive year.

"I thought I was going to be the great American writer, and that was a good place to do it," she said in a 1975 interview. "But you see it takes more to be the great American writer than just a wish."

Dr. Kohler, who never married and left no immediate family members, returned to school, this time at the University of Virginia, earning a master's degree in 1933, then a doctorate, studying with James Southall Wilson, a noted scholar who had been the first editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review. She received her Ph.D. in 1936, one of the first women in the history of the university to do so.

- N.Y. Times News Service