[3] At the University of Chicago Press, Philipson became known for large-scale scholarly projects such as The Lisle Letters (a six-volume collection of 16th-century correspondence by Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle), The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, a four-volume translation of the Chinese classic The Journey to the West, and Jean-Paul Sartre's five-volume The Family Idiot: Gustave Flaubert, 1821-1857.
[4][5] At Chicago, Philipson also published trade paperback editions of works by many literary figures beginning with Isak Dinesen,[6] and continuing with R. K. Narayan, Arthur A. Cohen, Paul Scott, Thomas Bernhard, and others.
Philipson cultivated strong relationships with French and German publishers, resulting in numerous translations published by the University of Chicago Press, including works by Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur, Yves Bonnefoy, and Claude Lévi-Strauss.
[7] In 1982, Philipson became the first director of scholarly press to win PEN American Center's Publisher Citation.
Philipson was the author of more than fifty articles and reviews[8] and five novels: Bourgeois Anonymous (Vanguard, 1965; Schocken, 1983), The Wallpaper Fox (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976), A Man in Charge (Simon & Schuster, 1979), Secret Understandings (Simon & Schuster, 1983), and Somebody Else's Life (Harper & Row, 1987).