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Chaptev5 The Agent I make careers. -James B. Pinker Literary agents began to appear in England in the 184os, and from the beginning they faced strong opposition from publishers. These early agents were a varied group and offered numerous services, including criticism and revision of manuscripts, marketing of manuscripts to publishers or periodicals, and correction of proofsheets. Many early agents were fronts for vanity publishers and pursued authors of high aspiration but snlall talent. These disreputable types had much to do with establishing a negative attitude anlong legitimate British publishers toward agents.' Both Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens had informal literary agents. As carly as the 1820s, Scott was using the tn70 Ballantyne brothers as his agents and, through thcm, playing the publishers Constable and John Murray against each other. The Ballantynes were printers, and one stipulation of each contract they negotiated was that Scott's novel be manufactured by their firm. Scott was their silent partner and sought thereby to increase his share of the profits without the publisher's knowlAfter 1836,the attorney John Forstcr functioned as unofficial agent for Dickens. Forster, who was interested in literature and was himself a writer of some ability, seems to have enjoyed the disti~lctionof being Dickens's friend and representative, and he sought no other remunera- tion . Eventually he would bcconle Dickens's first biographer." Some of the early authors' societies in England prov~ded the servicesof literary agencies to their members. This connection is important, for it demonstrates that the rise of the agent grew out of the writer's need for I . A good account of the advent of the literary agent in England is Jarnes Hepburn, The Author's Ewip1.lptv Pzme and the Rise of the Literayy A p n t (London: Oxford University Press, 1968).Much ofthe informat~on in the nest scvcral paragraphs is taken from Hepburn's book. 2. J. kt7,Saunders, The ProfessionofEnCglish Letters (London: Routlcdgc and Kegan Paul, 1964), pp. 1-8-79. 3. Robert I.. P,ltten, C:harles Diche~rsaizd His I'ublishers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978). 78 1 Anlerican Authors and the Literary Marketplace something resembling a trade union-a bargaining tool through which to deal with the publisher. The Guild of Literature and Art (1851),the Association to Protect the Rights of Authors (1875), the Society of Authors (1884),and the Authors' Syndicate (1889) were vario~~sl\~ organized to insure authors, to help then1through financial difficulties, and to facilitate their dealings with publishers. The only one of these organizations to endure, as we 11ave seen, was the Society of Authors, which still provides sotme of the services of a literary agency to its members.' The first true literary agents in England, in the sense that \lie think of agents todar: were A. M. Burghes and A. P. Watt. Burghes, who by 1882 was advertising his services in the Athenaeum, was of cluestionable intcgritv and was e\~entually taken to court for defrauding several of his clients. Watt, by contrast, was a man of probity and an excellent agent. A selfeducated Scot, addicted to books ancl literature, he began working as ail agent around 187i and was almost irmnediately successf~~l, probably because he met an existing need among authors. His clients included George Macdonald, Wilkic Collins, Rudyard Kipling, and W. B. Ycats. Usually Watt functioned as a ~niddlcman bcnveen ivriters and book publishers , and he flourished partly because he kept the interests of the publishers in mind when he negotiated. The next important agent to make an appearance in England (in 1896) was James B. Pinker, who during his long career handled work by Joseph Conrad, Arnold Bennett, Stephen Crane, Ford Madox Ford, Oscar Wilcle, Henry James, and, for a time, H. G. Wells. Pinker was an odd and sometimes abrasive character; Fames Joyce and D. H. La~rrenceactively disliked him, and he once so enraged Conrad that the author, in a fit of frustration, pushed out the sides of a leather armchair in which he was sitting. But the energetic Pinker \\.as attentive to his clients and was especially useful to them early in their careers. To an "engine for the production of fiction" like Bennett, his services were essential, even after Bennett had attained his famc.To the improvident Conrad he was even 4. Scc N~gcl Cros~, T/le CUWZPPIUE l!V~zt..itel-: Lip ZTI Ntrzeteerrt~~-(~entz~y~~ Gt-ttb.St~eet(Camhrldgc : Cambridge Univcrs~t!. Prcss, 198;).t i ~ r infi...

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