The Professional Literary Agent in Britain, 1880–1920 (review)

Literary agents' archives are often dry reading, consisting largely of private business correspondence to multiple authors, editors, and publishers negotiating terms of publication. The occasional spat between agent and author, publisher and agent, or author and publisher about the agent gains unwarranted attention, as by and large the correspondence is humdrum. Mary Ann Gillies, however, has recognised a gap in our understanding of the business of authorship and has embraced this field in order to shed light on the agent's role in the professionalisation of authorship. Gillies's book explores the relationships between two agents and five authors: A. P. Watt's work for George MacDonald and Lucas Malet and J. B. Pinker's with Joseph Conrad and the Irish duo Somerville and Ross (Edith Somerville and Violet Martin). Through these detailed studies she writes a history of the emergence and developing role of the literary agent in Britain between the 1880s and the 1920s.

Lucas Malet was the pseudonym of Mary St. Leger Kingsley Harrison, the youngest daughter of Charles Kingsley. Gillies's study of Watt's "ultimate failure to serve her as well as he served George MacDonald" is the most insightful of the book. Gillies argues that the agenting practices developed by Watt depended on two crucial factors: "a steady stream of work" (77) that could be marketed to develop a following for the author and a knowledge of "what markets were suited to each authors' output" (77). Malet, however, missed contractual deadlines, and she produced work inconsistently and in different genres. Gillies uses this study to illustrate the limitations of what she calls Watt's "template"—a formulaic agenting practice that ultimately was not flexible enough for Malet's irregular muse. Gillies argues that even so this formula was successful enough to put Watt in a "dominant position in the literary field" (85).

Contrasting the social origins, personal style, and avowed aims of Pinker with those of the older Watt, Gillies argues that the second wave of agenting sought to develop writers' careers rather than manage the affairs of established writers. The study of Pinker's work for Somerville and Martin is also particularly insightful, as it brings in the gender politics of the period. Somerville's "public erasure" of Pinker's assistance illustrates how women authors sought to project an image of their independence from the masculine professionalism of the industry.

The book's strengths lie in these case studies of popular authors. Excursions into the agents' dealings with Arnold Bennett, D. H. Lawrence, and a selection of modernist writers show that agents had the greatest influence on the working practices of authors who wrote for the popular or middlebrow market, urging on them book-a-year deals in reliable and readily marketable genres. Watt and Pinker were only two agents, and while Gillies outlines a shift in practices between the older and younger man, it is beyond the book's scope to draw conclusions about the agenting business as a whole. Constrained by the case studies, the book hints at but does not address broader questions pointing to areas for future research, including an overview of the agenting business that was such a crucial change in the book trade in this period. Publishing businesses in the nineteenth century were closely intertwined through the movement of individuals between one firm and another, families apprenticing sons in related businesses, or mutual investments and loans. Literary agency grew out of these trade practices, and agents learned their business in related firms before branching out on their own. For example, the founders of the well-known firms Hughes Massie and Co. and Pearn, Pollinger & Higham learned their trade with Curtis Brown. These relationships are important because they show the lineages of professional practices and author lists.

Similarly, Gillies's book offers glimpses of how agenting changed the profession of authorship in these years; however, it does not address the question directly. One useful...