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At the end of the millennium, the leading British industry magazine, The Bookseller, selected the ten people who had most influenced its century. Tom Maschler—described as "the most important publisher in Britain; the most innovative, adventurous, and newsworthy"—was one of them. It went on to say that for nearly 20 years, "he made publishing glamorous." Over the course of his career, Maschler launched the careers of Thomas Pynchon, Joseph Heller, Gabriel García Márquez, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, and Bruce Chatwin, among others. From the party where Norman Mailer stabbed his wife to the porch where Ernest Hemingway shot himself, this frank and fascinating memoir affords a rare glimpse into the golden days of British publishing. An extraordinary literary memoir by one great publishers of the 20th century.

Kirkus Reviews

Anecdote-packed memoir from the distinguished head of British publishing house Jonathan Cape. Maschler has worked with an array of preeminent writers, and his memoir is bursting with tales of Salman Rushdie, Joseph Heller, Ian McEwan, Philip Roth-even John Lennon. The author begins by detailing his early life, which included a fortuitous piece of luck-and a heady induction into the publishing world-when he strolled into the New York Times offices and persuaded a member of the editorial staff to allow him, an unknown teenager, to pen an article. (More than 50 years later, he still has the clipping.) Vibrant illustrations from Quentin Blake are interspersed throughout, and these rough pen-and-ink sketches fit in well with the author's clipped, staccato prose. When he's not recalling letters from Roald Dahl or a gruff encounter with Kingsley Amis or even the time he dropped LSD with Allen Ginsberg, Maschler muses on various spats, including one with former friend Sebastian Walker, who poached 12 Jonathan Cape authors for his own imprint, Walker Books. Revelations concerning the publisher's personal life surface only occasionally, although he does hint at times when he felt his position at Cape was under threat and also outlines a period he spent suffering from crippling depression. Full of tantalizing tidbits on some intriguing figures, though the brevity of his recollections may frustrate readers hungry for more detail.

Preface     ix
Prologue: A Moveable Feast     1
Part 1
Early Days     9
Rome     28
Paris     32
Part 2
My First Job in Publishing     39
MacGibbon & Kee     43
Penguin Books     46
Discovering America     51
A Special Place     64
Doris Lessing     70
Arnold Wesker     74
The Triumvirate     79
Bruce Chatwin     86
Salman Rushdie     90
Return to America     94
John Fowles     108
Critics     120
Latin America     126
John Lennon     134
Len Deighton     139
Some American Writers     145
Desmond Morris     153
The Booker Prize     158
Roald Dahl     162
Publishing Children's Books     168
The Big Three     177
Kingsley Amis     186
Short Pieces on Some Novelists     190
Jeffrey Archer     200
Wildlife     204
Lauren Bacall     209
Swifty and Artur Rubinstein     214
SomeAutobiographical Pieces     219
A House in the Luberon     225
The Deal     231
Two Painters     236
Photographers     240
Cookbooks     246
A Near Thing     251
The Frankfurt Book Fair     265
Marriage     270
Carney     272
Poets     276
Allen Ginsberg     278
Postscript     282
Index     285