Barbara Goldsmith, Writer, Philanthropist

Barbara Goldsmith, a prolific writer whose books included the 1980 bestseller “Little Gloria . . . Happy at Last” and who was a founding editor of New York magazine, died on June 26 at her New York City home. She was 85 years old and had congestive heart failure.

In her writing and research, Ms. Goldsmith, who had a house on Georgica Road in East Hampton for many years, had a particular interest in women of note. In addition to her acclaimed account of the 1934 Gloria Vanderbilt custody battle, she wrote “Other Powers: The Age of Suffrage, Spiritualism and the Scandalous Victoria Woodhull,” which was published in 1998, and “Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie,” in 2005.

According to one of her sons, John Goldsmith of Santa Monica, Calif., she worked with Dr. Mathilde Krim, the founder of the AIDS Medical Foundation, during the mid to late-1980s to secure funding for research during a time when little was understood about the illness.

Mr. Goldsmith said his mother worked with the Albert Einstein College of Medicine to get its dyslexia program off the ground, a cause close to her heart because two of her children were dyslexic. She was also supportive of libraries, including the East Hampton Library, where she was an honorary founding chair of and participant in the annual Authors Night fund-raiser, a frequent speaker, and key donor for the new children’s wing

Ms. Goldsmith also fought for book publishers to use acid-free paper after she noticed the historical documents she studied remained intact while newer texts would come apart easily. She also underwrote the PEN Freedom to Write Award, given to writers facing political persecution, between 1987 and 2015.

Despite all these accomplishments, she would have probably thought her crowning achievement was her children and grandchildren, her son said. “I remember her as very loving, very kind to us, always attentive, and smart as hell.”

Ms. Goldsmith was born Barbara Joan Lubin in New York City on May 18, 1931, to Joseph Lubin and the former Evelyn Cronson. She was raised in New Rochelle, N.Y., and graduated from high school there. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1953 with a degree in English and art history.

She and C. Gerald Goldsmith, an investment banker, who eventually divorced, were married in 1954. Her later marriage to the filmmaker Frank Perry, with whom she spent time in East Hampton as well as New York City, also ended in divorce.

Attracted to East Hampton’s then tightly knit creative community, Ms. Goldsmith began spending a lot of time here in the 1960s. “She felt very at home in this community. There was no pretense there. She didn’t feel the staid feeling she would find closer to the city. And then there were the obvious things. It’s beautiful out there,” her son said. He also said she was “the worst shortstop you’ve ever seen,” noting that she had played for the writers at the annual Artists and Writers Softball Game.

Mr. Goldsmith called his mother “a chronicler of a generation.” She wrote for publications including Art News, Woman’s Home Companion, Town and Country, and The New York Herald Tribune. It was in 1966 that Ms. Goldsmith lent Clay Felker, a former editor of the Tribune, enough money to acquire the name of that paper’s Sunday supplement, New York. It became New York magazine, and Ms. Goldsmith was named a founding editor.

“Boy, she could write, that’s for sure, and she was meticulous in her research,” he said. “She was always fascinated by the corrosive influence of money. It seems to run through her work as a theme, that and obviously strong females. Women set apart from their time. She probably identified with those people.” Ms. Goldsmith’s 1987 book “Johnson V. Johnson,” delved into a legal battle among the heirs of the Johnson pharmaceutical fortune.  Her only work of fiction, “Straw Man,” was about wrong-doing in the art world.

In addition to her son John, Ms. Goldsmith is survived by another son, Andrew Goldsmith of Beverly Hills, Calif., a daughter, Alice Elgart of New York City, and six grandchildren.

A graveside service for Ms. Goldsmith was held on June 29 at Green River Cemetery in Springs, with Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, of which she was a member, officiating.