Edie Sedgwick

Edie Sedgwick is present in The Andy Warhol Diaries less as a speaking character than as a figure whose image and reputation continue to move through other people’s lives. In 1982, the prospect of Jean Stein’s biography, its request for photographs from the original Factory, and the possibility that Edie might again become a cult figure made her past newly consequential. The diary records not a full biography of Sedgwick, but the contest over who could preserve, publish, and interpret her image.

The photographs and the biography

On March 15, 1982, Andy Warhol received a letter from Billy Name asking him to provide photographs from the original Factory on 47th Street for Jean Stein’s Edie book. Warhol refused. His objection was not simply a general reluctance to part with old photographs: he said he had heard that the book contained unflattering material about him, and he did not want to help supply images for it. The photographs thus became more than documentary records. They were material from a shared past that might shape a new account of Sedgwick and the Factory, and Warhol’s willingness to release them depended on his own anticipated portrayal.

The next day, Paul Morrissey told Warhol that Stein had read him a remark René Ricard had made about him for the book. Morrissey had threatened to sue if it appeared; Stein said she intended to print it. Warhol then telephoned Stein himself. He explained that finding the photographs would take a couple of afternoons, but that he had heard she had put him down in the book. When she answered that the interviews were tape-recorded, he took this to mean that other people, rather than Stein herself, had criticized him. He asked for a galley, but she said she had distributed them all. The exchange left the photographs withheld and the book’s contents, from Warhol’s perspective, uncertain.

Reputation, grievance, and self-interpretation

Warhol’s strongest recorded grievance concerned the description of him as a social climber. He insisted that the characterization was untrue and said that meeting wealthy young people and being invited to parties had not been his aim. At the same time, he acknowledged that he expected the other material in the book to be fascinating, whether true or not. His response reveals a distinction he drew between being exposed and being misrepresented: he could accept potentially damaging stories as interesting, but objected sharply to a label he believed falsified his motives.

This dispute places Sedgwick’s biography within a broader struggle over the meaning of the Factory’s past. The book drew on recorded interviews and on photographs Billy Name had made at the original Factory, while Warhol’s reaction focused on what the resulting narrative might say about him. Sedgwick’s story is therefore visible here through the competing claims around its making: an author assembling testimony, a photographer offering an archive, and former associates reacting to the prospect of publication. The diary does not establish what the book ultimately said about Sedgwick, nor does it provide her own response to its preparation.

The prospect of a renewed public image

By March 18, Warhol had learned that Jean Stein’s book Edie had received a six-figure advance from the Book-of-the-Month Club. He reconsidered what should happen to Billy Name’s photographs. If the book became a success and Sedgwick became a cult figure again, he thought, Billy might earn more by publishing his own portfolio of her photographs than by giving them to Stein. Warhol planned to write to Billy with the suggestion. His reasoning joined the possibility of renewed public fascination to a practical question of control and income: the same photographs could serve as material for a biography or as the basis of a separate portfolio.

The language of revival remained conditional. Warhol did not report that Sedgwick had already returned to public prominence; he imagined a book-driven resurgence and considered how it might alter the photographs’ value. In that sense, the diary catches her image at a threshold between archive and renewed commodity. Its continuing appeal was being anticipated, negotiated, and potentially packaged before the outcome was known.

Reading Sedgwick through other people

In July, Warhol noted that people at Montauk were reading Edie. He watched Jon Gould read it and thought that the book was making Jon turn against him. He also observed Ian Schrager’s interest in the book, though Schrager’s repeated questions concerned Paraphernalia, a subject Warhol regarded as unimportant within it. These reactions show the biography circulating beyond the immediate dispute over photographs: readers approached it with different interests, and Warhol interpreted their responses through his own relationships and judgments.

The diary’s view remains deliberately limited to what Warhol noticed and inferred. Jon’s supposed change of attitude is presented as Warhol’s impression, not as an independently confirmed response, while Schrager’s questions reveal his curiosity rather than the book’s full contents. Taken together, the entries portray Sedgwick’s posthumous presence as a force that could unsettle personal loyalties, provoke arguments over representation, and revive interest in the Factory’s history. They establish the reach of her image without pretending to recover her private voice.