Toinette Lippe was born in London, where she began her publishing career. In 1964 she came to New York City "for a year," worked at Simon and Schuster for three years, and then at Alfred A. Knopf as reprint rights director and editor for thirty-two years. In 1989, while still at Knopf, she founded Bell Tower, an imprint publishing books that nourish the soul, illuminate the mind, and speak directly to the heart, and she remained its editorial director for twenty years. Her own first book, Nothing Left Over: A Plain and Simple Life was first published in 2002 and her second, Caught in the Act: Reflections on Being, Knowing, and Doing, in 2004. In 2011 Vintage published a new edition of the Gia-fu Feng/Jane English translation of the Tao Te Ching, which Toinette edited at Knopf/Vintage in 1972 and which has sold more than a million copies. She and Jane English refreshed and revised the original translation, adding over a hundred new photographs by Jane and a foreword by Toinette, who is now listed as one of the translators. After fifty years in publishing Toinette abandoned editorial work and devotes herself to East Asian brush painting, which she taught at the Educational Alliance for four years and now teaches on the Upper West Side of New York City. You can view and purchase her paintings and cards at www.toinettelippe.com.