Anecdotes were at his fingertips from years of guiding authors and the worlds they brought to life: J.R.R. Tolkien and Middle-earth, Louis Auchincloss and the refined Upper East Side enclaves of Manhattan, Isaac Asimov and the far reaches of outer space.
Handling works ranging from the light romps of the "Curious George" books to weighty tomes by John Kenneth Galbraith and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. to the nature field guides of Roger Tory Peterson, Mr. Olney exhibited an intellectual range and gentleness that made him a beloved editor in Boston publishing for more than four decades.
Mr. Olney died Feb. 28 in his rural Marlborough, N.H., house, where in retirement he enjoyed gazing at vistas and spotting wildlife that wandered past the windows. He was 85 and had suffered from Alzheimer's disease.
"He was a gentleman, and I mean that in the old-fashioned sense," said Tracy Kidder, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who had thanked Mr. Olney in the acknowledgements of "House," published in 1985. "Just a lovely man - honest, forthright, reticent. To me, he represented publishing at its best."
In the kind of longevity rarely seen today, Mr. Olney spent his entire career at Houghton Mifflin, from the day he walked in for an interview in 1946 still wearing a Navy uniform until he stepped down in 1988 as senior vice president in charge of the trade and reference division.
Whether as a trainee, head of the children's book department, or board member, Mr. Olney was acutely aware of his place in a line of editors that began when Houghton Mifflin was founded in the mid-1800s as a publishing house determined to sway the national conversation on important issues in politics and the arts, colleagues said.
"My own personal concern is that we maintain our sense of quality - that we do what we used to do best - and still make a profit," he told the Globe in 1981 as the business landscape for publishing shifted along financial fault lines. "I think it's going to require ever more fancy footwork to do that."
And dance he did, cutting a rug that stretched from the company's accounting offices to the creative realm of writing.
"He really was an editor's editor and a writer's editor, someone who wanted to stay behind the scenes, who wanted writers to blossom," said Nancy Grant, senior vice president of marketing for HMH Supplemental Publishers, part of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt company that is home to Mr. Olney's former publishing house. "He made his editorial comments quietly, but extremely persuasively."
