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| Carol Smith | |
Carol Smith, who had a long literary career in writing, publishing, and being an agent, died June 5. She was 84. The Bookseller reported that "after growing up in London, she went to New York in the early 1960s and found her first publishing job with academic book publisher Arthur Rosenthal who moved her around his company giving her experience of every department. When she left, he suggested working as a literary agent so she started up her career in agenting back in London."
Smith worked at A.P. Watt before starting her own agency. Her family noted that "having successfully represented authors for years she took the plunge and became a bestselling author herself." Her books include Kensington Court, Double Exposure, Family Reunion, Hidden Agenda, Vanishing Point, Without Warning, Fatal Attraction, and Twilight Hour.
Wayne Brookes, associate publisher at Pan Macmillan, observed that as an agent, Smith "represented the best talent and as an author she entertained thousands with a tantalizing mix of the gothic and crime. She also had no time for literary snobbery. I personally owe my career to Carol Smith, and the world is a much darker place without her."
Stephen Rubin, consulting publisher for Simon & Schuster U.S. and former chairman of Transworld, added: "Carol was a true original. She was a flamboyantly independent agent, serving her myriad clients out of her beautiful, rambling flat in Kensington. When she tired of agenting, she became a successful novelist. No one was better at reinvention."
Noting that Smith "loved the business, and its people," Susan Fletcher, former deputy managing director of Hodder & Stoughton, said, "The adjective that particularly comes to my mind is 'enthusiastic' and she displayed that quality whenever I saw her, whether it be for a book she had just read, a TV show she was watching or a new friend she had made. It is a duller world without her."