A. P. Watt,literary agent |
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| Authors: | Mary Ann Gillies |
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| Institution: | (1) Department of English, Simon Fraser University, V5A 1S6 Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada |
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| Abstract: | 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.
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. |
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