CAMPUS

Report by Julie Young



It was a pleasure to have Rachel Calder, owner of Sayle Literary Agency, to come and speak to us about the role of the literary agent.

First of all Rachel took us back to the 1890s. Changes to the publishing industry allowed writers for the first time to earn a living from writing novels. Numbers of titles increased, as did literacy levels, and writers were looking for guidance to help them succeed in this changing market. Although people had provided similar services previously, the first man labelled ‘literary agent’ was A. P. Watt, who founded an agency still running today in London. Publishers were certainly not happy with the appearance of independent advocates for the author: William Heinemann referred to them as ‘parasites’ and ‘bar loafers’, with ‘not enough talent to succeed in business and not enough interest in literature to become a publisher’ – so no sour grapes there, then.



J. B. Pinker was the next listed literary agent, running his agency through to his death in 1920. Pinker recognised the potential in new writers and worked closely on manuscripts of the then little-known Arnold Bennett, Joseph Conrad, Henry James and D. H. Lawrence. Rachel took over the running of this agency in the 1990s from her predecessor, Tessa Sayle. Despite changes in the industry and the new styles of mega-agents such as Andrew Wylie, the role of the literary agent, acting as mediator between the publisher and the writer, has in outline remained the same.

Rachel further expanded on what it takes to make a good literary agent. You must have an ability to read a manuscript and then transmit the essence of the whole story into a couple of lines – for the right editor at the right publisher. Members of the audience were highly amused to learn the hidden meanings behind editorspeak, for example: ‘too literary’ = too boring, ‘everyone in my office loves it’ = my assistant liked it. It is then one of the agent’s many tasks to translate this into less brutal terms for the author.

With the hundreds of manuscripts that Sayle Literary Agency receives every month (occasionally addressed to someone who died 20 years ago, or Rachel’s father) it is impossible to identify every potentially successful author that comes along. The magic combination, which Rachel references, comes along when an agent reads a manuscript, knows what to do with it and can foresee an editor who will be interested in taking it on. This, she says, is a very rare thing indeed.

We all had an extraordinary and entertaining insight into the daily life of a busy literary agent, including the continuous reading, phone calls, sending to publishers, meetings, drawing up contracts, editing and still more reading … Rachel’s talk ended on a delightfully positive note: the literary agent will doubtless remain an integral part of publishing.

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The proud winner of the Campus World Book Night literary quiz was Peter Moorby of the journals production team at Cambridge University Press. Peter scored an incredible 6 out of 10 to beat all comers with his superior knowledge of famous drinks in literature.

So ask Peter if you want to know:
what a pan galactic gargle blaster is?
the name of the pub frequented by fourteenth century pilgrims
how to mix a mint julep...
or answers to other completely pointless but strangely interesting booky boozy questions.

This event is being organised by UIT Cambridge Ltd - www.uit.co.uk. Campus is pleased to…