A. P. Watt, literary agent

A. P. Watt, Literary Agent

Mary Ann Gillies

Today it would be hard to imagine the publishing world without literary agents. But agents are relative newcomers. The first arrived on the British literary scene some time in the late 1870s; A. P. Watt is generally regarded as the first true agent. It was Watt who defined the role and function of the agent and established a standard of conduct by which his contemporaries and successors were measured. Watt's activities had great impact on the business of publishing and on the types of literature writers produced. In fact, the agent was one of the main factors in the radical transformation of the publishing world that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century. This article looks at Watt's legacy: it focuses on both the publishing world and the institution of the literary agency. It suggests that Watt was a dominant force in both and that, without him, literary agency might not have prospered so well or so quickly.

I n The Social Produc t ion of A r t , Janet Wolff writes: "In constructing the 'great tradition' of literature or painting, the role of publishers, critics, gallery

owners, museum curators and journal editors cannot be overestimated. In the nineteenth century, there is a good deal of evidence that writers took into account the demands of the powerful mediators of the time in actually wri t ing their novels. "1 I would add the literary agent to her list of mediators and, furthermore, I would argue that agents gradually acquired as much influence as publishers, editors, or critics. In fact, the literary a g e n t - - w h o arrived on the scene in the late 1870s or early 1880s--is a factor in the radical t ransformation of the publishing world that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century.

As agents established themselves, they challenged the existing hierarchy: they threatened the power and authori ty of publishers and editors; they helped writers in their quest for empowerment ; and they participated in the creation of new literary marketplaces. However , the genesis and development of agency was not wi thout struggle or controversy. In fact, the emergence of agency was fought by both the publishers and the writers and was marked by disagree- ments among agents themselves. To a great extent, the agent 's eventual importance as part of the literary process was due to the efforts of three influential and distinctly different agents: A. P. Watt, J. B. Pinker, and Curtis Brown. Each man contributed to the agent 's rise to prominence and each defined the agent 's role in his own way. Collectively they became the models upon which twenti-

Mary Ann Gillies is a Canada Research Fellow and assistant professor of English at Simon Fraser University. She studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and received her D.Phil. in 1988. She is working on a book about the British literary agent. Address for correspondence: Depart- ment of English, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada VSA 1S6.

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eth-century agency is built and thus helped to shape this century 's publ ishing world. However , this article will look only at A. P. Watt.

In 1975, A. P. Watt & Son celebrated its centenary as a literary agency. 2 The firm's longevity alone would make it notewor thy in a field in which there is a very high turnover, but more important is the fact that the agency's founder, Alexander Pollock Watt, is generally regarded as the first true literary agent. 3 Watt was born in Glasgow in 1834; little is known about his early years, but we do know that for a time he worked for an Edinburgh bookseller, that he mar- ried the publisher Alexander Strahan's sister, and that by 1871 he had m o v e d to London to begin working as a reader for Strahan's publishing business. 4 By 1876 he was a partner in the second incarnation of Strahan & Co., s and by 1878 he was operating as an advertising agent selling advertising space in Strahan's stable of periodicals. Around 1878 he began the relationship with George MacDonald that led him to establish his literary agency, a l though it was not until 1881 that Watt advert ised himself as a literary, as well as an advertising, agent. 6 Ten years later Watt was established as the leading literary agent in Britain. Indeed, an interviewer in The Bookman of October 1892 claimed:

There are few writers of Fiction in this country who are not familiar with the name of A. P. Watt, and perhaps the number is equally small of those who are unfamiliar with the office on the first floor of 2, Paternoster Square. For it is there that the contracts are made under which, directly or indirectly, most important periodicals in this country, America, Australia, and elsewhere are suppl ied with the greater part of the novels and stories so necessary to their existence. 7

In twenty short years, Watt rose from the anonymity of a publisher 's reader to the center of the publishing world. The climb was anything but smooth, and in 1892 it was not yet finished. Notwi ths tanding the favorable comments of The Bookman interviewer, Watt still had to convince many writers of his useful- ness and often encountered outright hostility from publishers. Yet by his death in 1914, the agent was a prime player in the publishing world. To chronicle Watt 's rise to such eminence is beyond the scope of this article; rather, I want to focus on two specific areas in which Watt 's influence was particularly no- table: the business world, where the emergence of the agent directly altered the way publishers, editors, and writers worked; and the literary world, which Watt directly and indirectly shaped.

Agents and the Business of Publishing

In the late nineteenth century, agents performed three basic business functions: valuations of publishing businesses; sales of serial, translation, and foreign rights for editors and publishers; and sales of literary proper ty for writers.

When a publishing firm is for sale an assessment of the physical p rope r ty - -

22 Publishing Research Quarterly / Spring 1993

stock on hand, paper, stereoplates, and so on--is augmented by an assessment of the market value of the firm's copyrights. The volatility of the publishing world in the second half of the nineteenth century, which saw many firms fail or change hands, prompted an ever growing demand for skilled valuers of publishing assets. From the 1870s onward, literary agents assumed this function. A. M. Burghes seems to have been the most active agent in these types of transactions; his ads as well as notices of his valuations occur frequently in publications such as the The Publisher's Circular. Watt also functioned in this capacity, most notably for his brother-in-law during the liquidation of Strahan & Co. 8 Whether the agent worked for the buyer or seller, he was paid a fee or a percentage of the sale price. 9

The result of this commercial activity was twofold. First, it underscored the fact that copyrights were valuable property. This might seem unimportant or obvious, for the ownership of copyrights had long been acknowledged as a valuable source of revenue, particularly for publishers who depended on a healthy backlist for the well-being of the firm. Indeed, the publishing industry owes a good part of its development to the monopolistic control of valuable copyrights. 1~ However, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, authors, led largely by Walter Besant and the Society of Authors, were fighting "to promote the recognition of the fact, hitherto most imperfectly understood, that literary property is as real a thing as property in every other kind of business: that it should be safeguarded in the same manner, regarded with the same jealousy. "11 In practice, writers wanted a greater measure of control over their copyrights. By leasing, rather than selling, copyrights authors safeguarded their long-term interests while at the same time retaining a share in the immediate revenues gained by their work. What share they received and how long their interest in it lasted was contractually arranged, the details dependent on the market value that the publisher placed on the work. The agitation to recognize literature as property substantially altered the working relationships between author and publisher, making the writer a more active and equal partner in his own property and making the publisher more responsive to the writer and the marketplace. 12 By participating in, and in fact becoming the source of, the valuation of copyrights, agents such as Watt provided one basis for the authors' claim that literature was in fact genuine property.

The second result of the agent's commercial activities is less tangible, but of much greater importance to the development of literary agency as a profession. With their knowledge of how much a publisher's property would garner in the marketplace, agents gained a foothold in the publisher's world. An agent became indispensable to publishers in the basic business of assessing their own worth and in buying and selling their own property, but "indispensable" agents would acquire information that might be of great use to other potential clients, particularly writers. It is the knowledge of the marketplace and publishers--how they operate, which publishers accept what types of manuscripts, what the valuation of a manuscript is likely to be--that is the

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basis of an agent 's business. Watt, more than Burghes or any other of his contemporaries, took advantage of this knowledge and the contacts it b rought him and used them to establish the profession of the literary agent.

When Watt began his literary agency, one of his major functions was to represent publishers in the sale or lease of copyrights which they had pur- chased from authors. Until at least the 1890s it was standard practice for writers to sell their copyrights outright, thus ceding all publication rights (known as "outside rights") to the publisher, who in turn could make additional sums by selling or leasing them. The markets for book, serial, foreign (including Ameri- can rights after the copyright laws were regularized), and translation rights were lucrative. Added to these were dramatic and, later, radio, film, and televi- sion rights. The owner of the copyright could make many times more than the original sum paid for a story, depending on the extent to which the outside rights could be exploited. Because of the profit potential involved, it was not uncommon for a firm to acquire publishing rights that they were not in a position to exercise themselves. For instance, a magazine would purchase a story with the intention of serializing it themselves. In the transaction, they might have acquired any combination of the outside rights. The firm wou ld want to exercise them but might lack either the outlet or the expert knowledge of other markets. So it turned to the agent, who was already an expert in these transactions. Watt was widely employed by publishers in this business, as he himself admit ted in 1892:

My clients are not all authors, some of them are publishers! Yes; it's a fact, I could give you the names of six or seven of the largest firms in London, who, whenever they have any serial or book rights to dispose of, which for any reason they cannot handle themselves, invariably entrust the business to me. They, equally with my clients, recognize the fact that I, who do nothing but sell or lease copyrights, must know better than anyone else where to find the purchaser with w h o m the best bargain is likely to be made. 13

The publishers for whom Watt hand led business included Richard Bentley and Son, A. and C. Black, Chapman and Hall, Chatto and Windus, MacMillan & Co., Methuen and Co., and Houghton, Mifflin and Co., Boston. 14

Essentially, Watt acted for publishers as he did for writers: he took their property, placed it in the appropriate market, and received a fee for his efforts. The key here is that an agent's function, as Watt unders tood and practiced it in the early years, was to deal with the buying and selling of copyrights. Raymond Savage, some forty years later, put this issue clearly: "I am a Literary Agent whose business it is not only to act as an Author 's agent but in any agency capacity which may be of benefit to authors, publishers, editors or theatrical managers. Where I am acting on behalf of an author I am solely the authors ' [sic] agent, but in other cases I might act as a publisher 's agent or again in a


joint capacity. "is An ethical agent, as Watt was widely acknowledged to be ) 6 believed that his own welfare depended on his client's success, and for him a client was the person, or firm, with a copyright to lease or sell.

When A. P. Watt first began helping George MacDonald, he was acting as others had before. He placed MacDonald's material with publishers and looked after the business details. And like John Forster, Dickens's friend, or John Henry Lewes, for George Eliot, Watt performed these tasks, initially at least, for free. Unlike these two, Watt soon saw the commercial possibilities. Without existing guidelines, Watt had to determine the manner and the amount he should be paid for his professional services. Initially, he charged set fees for specific tasks--for letters, for telegraph expenses, for drawing up contracts. 17 But this proved unsatisfactory as clients did not always pay the fees, so he adopted the practice of publishers and obtained his fee before the author was paid. Watt settled on the commission system he had employed as an advertising agent; by charging a 10 percent fee on the monies his clients earned, Watt established the basic rate that is still operative today. Eventually, the standard agency contract included a clause stating that royalties were to be paid to the agent, who would in turn pass them on the writer after deduct ing his commission. Once the financial relationship became standardized, the most important issue remained: on whose side did the agent stand?

It would be simple to say that the agent stands beside his c l ient - -whether the client is an author, editor, or publisher--as Raymond Savage claims above, but in fact the situation is more complex. In any given transaction, the agent would be negotiating with a publisher with w h o m he wished to work in the future. An individual author's needs would have to be placed alongside the agent's own long-term relationship with the publisher, but at the same time, an agent who placed the publisher before his own client could not hope to stay in business for long. To further complicate things, publishers often became clients for whom the agent then negotiated with other publishers. The fluid nature of the industry meant that the agent could not afford to alienate anyone. "While I undoubtedly make it my business to get the best possible bargain for my client," Watt noted, "I recognize the fact that that bargain is not a good one and not in the best interests of the author unless there is room for a fair profit to the publisher. "is Watt's approach was echoed almost fifteen years later by Curtis Brown, who wrote that the literary agent "stands between the author and the publisher, and he ought to uphold better than either of them the importance of the greatest truism in the trade, viz., that no bargain is ever really sound and honest without being profitable to both parties to it. "19 Ideally, then, the agent walks a narrow line at tempting to be fair to both publisher and author, and by doing so he serves the publishing industry as a whole.

But the agent is contractually and morally bound to the client from whose earnings he acquires his commission. It is to the client, most frequently an author, that the agent owes his first allegiance. This is clearly the position held by the Society of Authors, which frequently railed against agents who served

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publishers at the expense of authors. In 1899, for example, an article on the agent in The Author commented on the morality and ethics of agents:

It has been stated that certain agents take money from publishers in re turn for placing books with them. No proof of this allegation has yet been discovered, and one hopes that the thing is the invention of an enemy. It is needless to say that such a practice would be the most flagrant breach of trust. It wou ld be exactly as if a solicitor was to take money from his client's adversary as well as his own client) ~

Though Watt acted for publishers, he probably wou ld have agreed that agents who took a fee from publishers for placing a work with them were unethical.

Ethics aside, Watt was an author 's advocate because it made good business sense. It is a case of enl ightened self-interest, for by al lowing a fair profit for the publisher, Watt ensured the markets for his clients. And by garner ing the best price for his clients, he p rompted a steady stream of writers to his agency. That he sees his work as being more connected to authors is evident from his view of the agent 's role in the following description; note the emphasis on tasks fulfilled solely for authors:

The work of the Literary Agency is to conduct all business arrangements of every kind for authors and playwrights; that is to say, to place MSS. to the best advantage; to watch for openings; to sell copyrights either abso- lutely or for a l imited period; to collect royalties, and to receive other moneys due; to transfer literary property; to value literary property; to obtain opinions on MSS. etc., etc. 21

The adversarial relationship between publishers and authors grew more ac- r imonious in the last years of the nineteenth century. Authors accused publishers of cheating them. The Author frequently presented cases where u n n a m e d writers had been cheated by publishers who overcharged them for print ing costs, corrections, and, especially, for advertising. Even established writers such as H. G. Wells complained to Watt that they were being cheated. 22 Pub- lishers believed that authors were interested only in lining their own pockets. William Heinemann and Henry Holt were two of the most vocal; they did not hesitate to criticize writers for their part in the g r o w i n g commercialization of literature. The agent stepped into this heated situation. He needed to gain the trust of both sides in order to function properly. This was not easy since many publishers agreed with William Heinemann when he said, "This is the age of the middleman. He is generally a parasite. He always flourishes. I have been forced to give him some little attention lately in m y particular business. In it he calls himself the literary agent." He concluded his attack with this wish: "I cannot help hoping that [the Society of Authors] will go a step further and lend its powerful aid to kill the canker [the agent] that is eating itself into the very heart of our mutual interest. "23

26 Publishing Research Quarterly/Spring 1993

Many authors wou ld have agreed with the warnings about agents that filled the pages of The Author and wou ld have been skeptical about agents' claims to be on their side. However , the basis of the agent 's work is the trust he can establish between himself and his clients. The authors must trust that the agent will do his best to place his or her work, that the price negotiated will be the best that can be got for the work, and that in each transaction the agent places the author 's welfare above all other considerations. The publisher must trust that the agent is negotiating fairly with him, that he represents the publisher 's offers accurately to the author, and that the agent is not out to gain a price for the work that the publisher can never recoup. Watt won the trust of both sides. Mrs. Belloc Lowndes said of Watt that he was "a man of outs tanding intellec- tual gifts and integrity, "24 and W. Robertson Nicholl made a similar observation when he wrote that Watt's "work was largely that of a diplomatist, and he may not always have been successful in the adjustment of conflicting schemes. Gradually, however, he won his way to general confidence . . . . Of this there can be only one explanation. That explanation is that he was a very able and a very honest man, doing a necessary work. "25 His success was due as much to these qualities as it was to his business acumen or his ability to size up a market or a piece of literature. Watt set the business standard for future agencies, but his s tandard was, and is, difficult to reach. Juggling the often conflicting interests of a stable of clients, some of whom also are publishers, often proved impossible. This left an endur ing legacy of divided loyalties and mistrust that is still the agent 's lot and which can only be surmounted by the individual agent 's reputation for integrity and honesty.

Agents in the Literary World

The agent's principal literary task was to recognize a work that wou ld sell. There was no sense in trying to place material for which there was no market, especially when the agent 's earnings depended on commissions. In order to build his firm, an agent had to develop a "nose" for l i te ra ture- -works that would bring either financial or critical success (preferably both) to the publisher. A solid track record was essential for his survival because it gave him access to publishers and editors. As agents began to prove their ability to deliver the "product" to publishers, they exerted a growing amount of influence on the type of product they delivered. Agents knew not only what wou ld sell in the final destination marke t - - the readersh ip- -bu t also in the in termediary marke t - - the publishers and editors. They were able to pass this knowledge on to their clients, thereby directly or indirectly influencing what was eventually written.

An agent's direct influence on writers is easier to demonstrate, perhaps because it involves activities we associate with agents today. It takes two different forms. First, the agent may function as a de facto publisher 's reader, receiv- ing manuscripts and assessing them. Because the agent knows what types of works sell, he can determine whether the manuscript is marketable as it is, or

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whether it needs to be revised. If it needs alterations, the agent tells the wri ter what changes would enhance its marketability. Al though Watt was not so actively interventionist as other agents, he nonetheless occasionally instructed his clients on issues such as language, plot, or the morality of a work. 26 Because of his reputat ion as a good judge of literature, his recommendat ion to a publisher carried weight. 27 As Watt 's agency grew, so did his influence; he was representing more writers, reading more manuscripts, advising more writers on the marketabili ty of the work and the need for revisions. All of this had an impact on the marketplace because more of the "product"- -books , stories, articles, drama, and poet ry- -passed through Watt 's office.

The second form of direct influence starts at the other end of the product ion line. An editor who wants to commission a story has two options: contact an author directly or contact an agent who can find a writer to execute the commission. As Watt 's reputation for providing quality work grew along with his client list, he became a logical contact for editors in search of stories. 28 Watt would determine what the editor wanted and wou ld then approach a wri ter with the editor 's offer. A commissioned story meant a guaranteed sale, so many authors were more than happy to write to specific requirements. Often careers began in this fashion; later, when well established, the writer could command a high price for commission work or could refuse it altogether. 29 Because Watt was instrumental in filling orders for commissioned work, he often directly influenced what authors wrote, not in the narrow sense that he dictated the specifics of a story, but in the broader sense that he steered writers toward particular magazines or publishers and this determined what they wrote.

Indirect influence is much harder to establish because many forces operate together to determine what sorts of things get writ ten or published, and the agent is only one factor. However , I want to suggest two indirect ways in which Watt shaped not only his immediate literary world, but the twentieth- century literary scene as well.

Watt may not have invented the agent, but he certainly played the central role in defining and refining the role and functions of agents. By the turn of the century, other agencies had begun to challenge his s u p r e m a c y p n o t a b l y J. B. Pinker and Curtis Brown- -bu t for almost twenty years, from the late 1870s through the mid-1890s, Watt dominated the field. By playing such a prominent role in establishing the legitimacy of agents, Watt bears some responsibility for the commercialization of literature that occurred so rapidly in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Yet the influence here is subtle; Watt, and the other agents who came to occupy prominent positions, p rompted a radical shift in the balance of power in the literary world. Agents unde rmined publishers' authority by forcing them to expose their activities to public sc ru t iny- - public in the sense of authors and agents. Agents helped authors to empower themselves by assisting them in their fights for better financial terms and more control over their literary property. And agents garnered power for themselves by creating a service on which both authors and publishers eventual ly


came to depend. The extent of this subtle influence can be found in the viru- lence of the responses from the party who had most to lose, the publisher.

It was commonplace for publishers to lament the decline in literary quality that they saw as a consequence of the expanded marketplace and the subsequent commercialization of literature. Many held the agent largely responsible. In a characteristic blast from a publisher, Henry Holt laments the transforma- tions brought about by the increasing sums paid to authors and the competit ion engendered by agents who hawked writers' wares in the marketplace. In 1905 he wrote:

The literature of our mother tongue has been commercial ized to an extent not dreamed of in any time of which I have knowledge; and- - l e t him who will, say post hoc propter hoc--within our generation our literature has fallen to a lower estate than it knew for generations before. The priest who entered the temple with bowed head and under the vow of pover ty has been replaced by the man with the yacht and the motor-car. 3~

He claimed:

the more authors seek publishers solely with reference to what they will pay in the day's market, the more publishers bid against one another as stock brokers do, and the more they market their wares as the soulless articles or ordinary commerce are marketed, the more books tend to become soulless things. 31

He allows that there might be "a justification for a person so unbusinessl ike as the author generally is, supplement ing himself with a business adviser to look over contracts and royalty s ta tements--a sort of lawyer and auditor." But he goes on to say "that in carrying his functions farther, the agent has been the parent of most serious abuses, has become a very serious detr iment to literature and a leech on the author, sucking blood entirely out of proport ion to his later services; and has already begun to defeat himself. "32 Such a strong response to the writer 's and agent 's active participation in the publ ishing wor ld is surely incited by a real fear, not only for the condition of literature, but also, and more importantly, for the condition of publishers.

In his response to Holt, Curtis Brown presented a different assessment of the situation:

N o w it used to be considered good form for the author to know little or nothing about market rates, and to take whatever he could manage to get from his publisher without resorting to any systematic use of competition. When the agent came along and began to prove by expert knowledge of market prices that in many cases the author had not received as much as his work was worth in the open market, it was only h u m a n nature for the author 's publisher to call the agent a villain. 33

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Brown's reasonable claim was that agents make the playing field level, that

the wise literary agent of to-day and of the future will act for the author on a policy of competition, it is true, but competit ion carefully tempered by a regard for the value of friendly relations between author and publisher. The best ar rangement between author and publisher is the one of closest touch on the literary side of the work, leaving the commercial side to be arranged between publisher and agent, on the basis of the value of the author 's work in the open market. 34

Implicit in Brown's remarks is the belief that the resulting redistribution of power among publisher, agent, and author leads to a system that works better for all parties. Although this is certainly open to argument, it is evident that just such a power-sharing relationship evolved. Once Watt was firmly established, this new power nexus became inevitable, and fight as hard as they would, publishers had no way to stop it, for if they refused to deal with Watt or other agents, they cut themselves off from a large number of wri ters and thus jeopardized their business.

The second way in which Watt influenced the literary scene was uninten- tional, but important. When I look at Watt 's client l is t--ei ther the one suppl ied in his own advertisements 3s or the list of contributors to the Letters to A. P. Wat t - - I am struck by the absence of writers who have dominated British literary studies in the twentieth century. With the exception of W. B. Yeats and Thomas Hardy, no major modernist writer is found on the list. 36 It is true that respected writers such as Arnold Bennett, H G Wells, Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, Wilkie Collins, and Lewis Carrroll were clients; but Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Henry James, to name a few who have exerted much influence on twentieth-century literature, were not. In fact, they were represented by another agent, J. B. Pinker. Others on Watt 's list, w h o m it would probably be fair to call middlebrow, include Baroness Orczy, Walter Besant, Arthur Conan Doyle and Mrs. Oliphant. These writers were undoubtedly popular in their time, and Conan Doyle, at least, still is, but they do not figure prominent ly in early twentieth-century literary experiments.

Leaving aside the contentious issue of what constitutes "great" literature and what is "popular" and therefore of lesser intrinsic value, I think we can still draw a valuable conclusion from these observations. Watt 's client base is conservative in the sense that his authors reflected the prevailing taste of the general reader, in most cases, and their works found a ready home in the marketplace. This is not to say that Watt had an easy task selling his clients' work, nor do I want to suggest that Watt worked only with established authors. 37 What I am suggesting is that Watt tended to be less wil l ing to represent writers for w h o m there was not a ready-made audience. This could s imply be the result of a pragmatic business sense--Wat t choosing to represent writers from w h o m he could be assured a reasonable commission. But I think it is also symptomatic of Watt 's apparent unwill ingness, or failure, to see that the ongo-


ing changes in the publishing world might bring about new markets and might even create new sorts of readers. Watt was less active than Pinker and others in helping to develop a market for experimental writers, and given Watt's dominant position, his failure to push innovative writers resulted in a much harder struggle for them. For example, Watt approached Conrad only after the writer had begun to establish a literary reputation and after Pinker had cham- pioned him. 38 Pinker virtually supported Conrad; believing that in time he would find a market, Pinker advanced Conrad money and worked very hard to convince publishers and editors that their gamble on Conrad would pay off in the long run. We know that Pinker was right, but what is more important is that by opening the door for Conrad, he opened it for others who exploited the market that Conrad's work created.

The main impact of Watt's conservatism is significant. Because Watt's agency was the leading representative of writers, a new writer's career could be given an enormous boost if he or she were added to the client list. Joining Watt meant that the firm's contacts and experience were brought into play on the writer's behalf. This was a tremendous advantage because it meant that doors were opened, opportunities provided that the writer struggling alone might not have. The obvious catch here, for the writer, is that the work had to be the sort that Watt felt his agency could sell. Those whose work flouted conventions or could not be slotted into an existing market were unlikely to be taken up by Watt. But they were also unlikely to be taken up by most publishers, who were just as concerned with marketability. So these writers were left outside the mainstream unless their work caught the eye of the public. 39

Watt's failure to rise above the fairly conservative literary boundaries of his day drove many writers outside the existing organs of publishing. Rather than admit defeat and tailor their work to the existing market, writers like Joyce, T. S. Eliot, T. E. Hulme, and Ezra Pound set out to create their own markets. They started their own presses--the Woolfs' Hogarth Press, for example; they started their own magazines---Wyndham Lewis's Blast and Middleton Murry's Rhythm, to name only two; and later in the century, they found refuge in the universi- ties where experimental writers can earn a living independent of their writing if need be. The result of their activity was the growth of a parallel literary marketplace, one that supported, however minimally, experimental writing. The larger, "popular" marketplace was affected by the "experimental" one- - the later success and influence of Eliot and Woolf attest to this--but on the whole, the twentieth century has witnessed the parallel existence of these two markets. Ironically, then, Watt's conservatism proved beneficial in the long run.

By now, we can see that Watt's legacy was significant and wide reaching. He established the role of the literary agent, devised the agent's basic responsibili- ties and tasks, and set a standard of integrity, honesty, and performance by which his peers and successors were measured. His impact on the business practices of publishers and authors was a factor in the transformation of the whole industry. And although less noticeable, and less direct, Watt's imprint is

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present on the literature produced in the latter two decades of the nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century. However, Watt is only one figure in the complex and fascinating early years of literary agency. J. B. Pinker gained renown as the writer's agent, and in doing so he provided a very different service than Watt. Curtis Brown, too, left his stamp on the business. His vision of an agency functioning in an international marketplace and his early sense of the possibilities of film opened new opportunities for writers and publishers. But Watt was first on the scene, and it probably would not be overstating the case to claim that agents might not have prospered so quickly or so well had it not been for Watt.

Notes

This article is part of a larger project on the literary agent. Funding for the project has been provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada- -a Canada Research Fel lowship-- and by the president of Simon Fraser Universi ty--a President 's Research Grant. I am grateful to them for their support.

1. Janet Wolff, The Social Production of Art (London: MacMillan, 1981), 45. 2. Hilary Rubenstein, "A. P. Watt: The First Hundred Years," The Bookseller, 3 May 1975. The date seems

to me a bit arbitrary. It is unlikely that Watt was actually established as an agent before 1878; he himself comments in an interview in The Bookman in 1892 that he had been acting as an agent for some fourteen years, and that would make 1878 the year he began acting as an agent, not 1875. (See note 7 for citation.)

3. This is a somewhat contentious point, in that other individuals had undertaken the business affairs of writers prior to Watt 's first functioning as an agent in the late 1870s. However, most commentators concede that Watt was the first to engage systematically in the business of representing writers for a percentage of the sums gained from publishers. Hepburn 's The Author's Empty Purse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968) is the only lengthy study to examine the precursors to the literary agent, and he names Watt as the first real literary agent (p. 94). Most other discussions of British publishing that deal in any way with agencies concur with Hepburn.

4. The facts here are obscure, and accounts often vary according to the commentator. For instance, Hepburn claims that Watt moved from a bookseller's in Edinburgh to join Strahan, while Patricia Thomas Srbernik, in Alexander Strahan: Victorian Publisher (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1986), suggests that Watt may have lived in Glasgow immediately prior to joining Strahan in London. The important points, however, are not in dispute: that Watt 's marriage to Strahan's sister gave him an entry into the London publishing world and that he arrived in London in 1871 as a reader for Strahan's.

5. An item in the "Trade Changes" section of The Publisher's Circular for April 15, 1876, states that "Mr. A. P. Watt has now become a partner in the firm of Strahan & Co." (vol. 39, no. 926 [April 15, 1876]:296). Srbernik concurs with this date (p. 159.)

6. A notice under the heading "Trade Changes" in The Publisher's Circular for January 18, 1881, states that Watt is now an advertising and a literary agent (vol. 44, no. 1040 [January 18, 1881]:6).

7. F.W., "An Interview with Mr. A. P. Watt," The Bookman 3, 13 (October 1892): 20. 8. The Berg Collection of the New York Public Library contains ten folders of letters (written to Watt as

the agent for William Hunter; they include letters, from publishers and from Hunter himself) which pertain to Watt 's disposition of Strahan & Co's assets. These include sales of copyrights--MacDonald 's , Buchanan's, Vaughan 's - -as well as stock and stereoplates.

9. It was not uncommon for each side to enlist the same agent for its valuation of the property, so that the agent in question could often earn two commissions on the single transaction. The possibility of double commissions occasionally resulted in unethical behavior; Burghes was tried and convicted of fraud in 1912. His behavior as a valuer of publishing assets, however, appears to have been aboveboard.

10. Most good studies of publishing history deal with this issue. See John Feather's A History of British Pub- lishing (London: Croom Helm, 1988) for an excellent, recent account of the subject.

11. Walter Besant, The Author 1,1 (May 15, 1890):1. 12. Most writers sold their copyrights outright, often forgoing the possibilities of large royalties for the

sake of cash up front. Walter Besant, among others, continued to do this even after Watt became his agent. Some writers sold copyrights early in their careers but quickly learned to retain their valuable property; Thomas Hardy is an example. Some publishers would give additional sums to a writer whose book had performed well above the price he sold it for, but this was not a common practice and the publisher was under no obligation to do this. The new contractual arrangement spelled out the


responsibilites of each party assumed in their joint venture: the amount of money a publisher would pay the writer and the amounts he could deduct for things such as advertising, office costs, and production costs; the author's obligations included payment for corrections in excess of an agreed- upon limit, meeting a set publication schedule, and whether the publisher had the first option on subsequent books.

13. The Bookman, October 1892, p. 21. 14. This is a partial list of publishers with whom Watt did business. The lists of publishers in the various

collections of letters to Watt is more extensive (numbering at least a dozen) and demonstrates just how widespread Watt's contacts were.

15. Raymond Savage, "The Authors' Agent," The Author 43, 1 (Autumn 1932): 6. 16. Testimonials to Watt's character abound. The solicited comments that make up the volumes of Letters to

A. P. Watt (published by various London firms in 1893, 1894, 1896, 1898, 1924) contain much praise from publishers and authors, but even more impressive are those unsolicited comments found in memoirs, letters, even in articles on agents that were written by clients and nonclients of Watt. Walter Besant, for example, frequently railed against unscrupulous agents in the pages of The Author, but he unfailingly praised Watt as an exception to such comments.

17. On this see Hepburn, The Author's Empty Purse, p. 54. 18. The Bookman, October 1892, p. 21. 19. Spencer Curtis Brown, "The Commercialisation of Literature and the Literary Agent," Fortnightly Re-

view, N .S. 80 (August 1, 1906): 359. 20. "Literary Agents," The Author 9, 10 (March 10, 1899): 232. 21. Quoted in W. Robertson Nicholl, "A. P. Watt: The Great Napoleon of the Realms of Print," The British

Weekly, November 12, 1914: 127. 22. Wells' constant complaints about publishers often contained the injunction that Watt should watch the

publisher closely so as to prevent any cheating. His letters to Watt in the Berg Collection are filled with such cautions and with requests that the publishers' books be made available to him so that he could keep a close eye on the figures.

23. William Heinemann, "The Middleman as Viewed by a Publisher," The Athenaeum, no. 3446 (November 11, 1893): 663.

24. "The Authors' Agent: Is He the 'Fifth Wheel on the Literary Coach'?" The Author 42, 4 (Summer 1932): 96.

25. Nicoll, "A. P. Watt," p. 127. 26. Watt often expressed his opinions about a client's work~particularly when he felt it had some literary

significance--and he sometimes also gave advice. For example, when Rider Haggard was dramatizing Child of Storm (under the title Mameena) he wrote to Watt: "Having no copy of Child of Storm with me, I have had to work from memory. I wish you would look through them and let me have your views. If you will get out a rough synopsis of your idea of what the various scenes and acts should be, I hope to be able to work it on the way home." (Quoted in D.S. Higgins, Rider Haggard: The Great Storyteller [London: Cassell, 1981], 214).

27. Many publishers were slow to accept agents, but Watt's reputation for knowing good literature eventually led some publishers to trust his assessment of manuscripts. In The Bookman interview, Watt quotes from a publisher's letter as proof of the acceptance of his abilities: "'I really do not know how a busy man like myself could ever manage to publish serial stories at all were it not for your assistance, which entirely saves one the trouble of ploughing through rubbish, and at the same time enables one to ascertain, at a moment 's notice, exactly to what extent leading novelists are available for the purposes of serial publication'" (The Bookman, October 1891, 21).

28. Although editors approached Watt because they were certain to obtain articles from those authors on his list, the experience was not always pleasant. Ford Maddox Ford wrote: "I remember that when I edited the English Review I went to [Watt] to ask him for something by one of his clients and he was so patronising that I still feel like a worm when I think of it" (Ford Maddox Ford, Return to Yesterday ]London: Liveright, 1932], 64).

29. Arnold Bennett provides a typical example of the successful professional writer at this time, but he started his writing career by scrambling to place pieces in the various literary magazines and periodicals of the time. Although he was grateful for whatever commissions came his way, he referred to this time as "the humiliating part of my literary career" (Arnold Bennett, The Truth About an Author [London: Methuen, 1914], 60). Once he became established he was in a position to accept or reject commissions that often came to him unsolicited.

30. Henry Holt, "The Commercialization of Literature," Atlantic Monthly 96, 5 (November 1905): 600. 31. Ibid., p. 578. 32. Ibid., p. 583. 33. Curtis Brown, "The Commercialisation of Literature' and the Literary Agent," Fortnightly Review, N.S. 80

(July 1906): 357. 34. Ibid., p. 358. 35. Watt claimed that he didn't advertise, but this is disingenuous. His practice was to circulate letters

from present clients to potential clients, and this was formalized in the volumes of Letters to A. P. Watt.

Gillies 33

Moreover, he often used the press to advertise under the guise of a change of address, as in 1885 in The Author, where a notice of his new address ran for over a dozen issues. He advertised outfight in 1891, where he used the occasion of the new copyright law as an excuse for attracting new clients (see The Author 1, 11 [May 18, 1881]: 307).

36. Wart's client list is a bit misleading. It names clients for whom he did minimal work---Hardy and Oliphant, for instance--or who moved on to other agents--Bennett and Wells, for example--alongside those for whom he did a great deal of work--Collins and MacDonald, for example. The list's obvious purpose was to convince writers of Wart's importance and preeminence, and listing famous individuals, even if he did little work for them, enhanced his credibility.

37. Such claims that the agent made money only by representing established writers are, however, one of the charges levied most frequently against agents by publishers and authors alike.

38. Pinker began his relationship with Conrad in about 1899; Watt sent him a copy of Letters to A. P. Wat t some time in the first few years of the twentieth century (the exact date is hard to pin down), but it was after Conrad had begun to attract critical attention.

39. It is true that publishers occasionally took chances on young, unproven talent hoping that in the long run the work would create its own market, but this was not common.

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A. P. Watt, literary agent

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