Introduction

James Brand Pinker was the most pre-eminent literary agent of the early twentieth century: his client list included authors such as Henry James, Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, Jack London, Stephen Crane, George Gissing, Ford Madox Ford, Violet Hunt, George Egerton, Rebecca West, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Dorothy Richardson and James Joyce. The role of ‘literary agent’ was a phenomenon of the late nineteenth century, when authorship was becoming increasingly professionalised and literature ever more commercialised. As Mary Ann Gillies notes: ‘from the beginning, professional literary agents were characterized as middlemen who brokered deals between sellers and buyers of literary property. One consequence of this conception of agenting was the ethical dilemma about where the agent’s primary loyalty resided’: with the author or with the publisher. From the beginning of his career, Pinker made it clear that his first allegiance was to the author, and he carved out a unique position for himself within this new literary marketplace by supporting the untried writer and untested work, presenting himself as the champion of new authors and new literature. In this way, Pinker was able to distinguish his firm from competitor agencies such as Curtis Brown and A. P. Watt and Son, and his name became indelibly associated with Modernist literature. Pinker provided experimental writers with the same support and opportunities he afforded to more marketable, commercially viable clients. It is no wonder, therefore, that KM sought his services not once but twice, eventually securing Pinker as her agent in 1921.

Not much is known about Pinker’s early life, beyond the fact that he was born to James and Mary Brand Pinker in 1863. After working as a clerk at Tilbury Docks in London for just over a year, Pinker travelled to Constantinople in 1887 to work as a foreign correspondent for the Levant Herald. He married Mary Elizabeth Seabrooke in 1888. From a very modest background, Pinker’s marriage changed his material fortunes; his wife’s family had made money in the brewing business, and it is likely that the marriage enabled Pinker to leave his job in Turkey to pursue his journalistic ambitions in London.