British literary agent Felicity Bryan, who founded her eponymous agency 32 years ago, died June 21. She was 74. The Bookseller reported that "two days before she died she received an MBE, having been recognized in the New Year Honors for services to publishing over the last 48 years, and [recently] the Washington Post renamed the Laurence Stern Fellowship, now known as the Stern-Bryan Fellowship, in her honor." Among the authors she worked with were Karen Armstrong, Rosamunde Pilcher, Edmund de Waal, Iain Pears, Diarmaid MacCulloch and Mary Berry.
Her family wrote in a statement: "In the last few months Felicity has shown more clearly than ever why so many have loved and admired her. Her courage and resilience that have been called on so many times in her life have been manifest in the calm and realism with which she faced her final illness, and in the happiness she said she felt in recent weeks.... She has taken great care to ensure that her authors will be well looked after by her colleagues at Felicity Bryan Associates, and when already very ill she started a series of weekly e-mails about authors' newly-published books whose launches were adversely affected by Covid. She took particular pleasure in the hundreds of messages of farewell, written from the heart by friends and colleagues."
Penguin Random House chair Gail Rebuck praised her as a "literary agent extraordinaire" and an "effervescent bundle of energy [and] enthusiasm matched by deep intelligence [and] strategic insight. She cherished her authors, her family [and] adored her chosen career. How we shall miss her unique spirit. She was one of the greats."
Alexandra Pringle, Bloomsbury's executive publisher, said she was a model for "how women could and should work together. Felicity Bryan always reminded me of a hummingbird--iridescent, vivid, swift, diminutive. We loved her for all she brought to our world: her enthusiasms and her acuity, her sense and her tenacity, her lipstick and her hats, her joie de vivre and the pleasures she got from a good deal. She showed us how women could and should work together--and how, in the end, nothing matters more than our authors. She shall be very, very much missed."