Publisher and author Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, who "launched his publishing firm with one of the boldest gambles of a short-lived British literary era marked by high hopes, big money and gossip-fueled ebullience," died January 20, the Guardian reported. He was 85.
In 1990, the former managing director of Hamish Hamilton launched his own imprint, Sinclair-Stevenson, with a biography of Charles Dickens by Peter Ackroyd. "His famously generous advances rested on the prospect of lucrative sales of paperback rights to larger publishers," the Guardian wrote. "But this brief spell of what economists would call 'irrational exuberance' in the U.K. book trade could not last. By 1992, his imprint had been sold to the Reed group, which in 1995 passed it to Random House--which closed it down."
As an author, Sinclair-Stevenson's books include That Sweet Enemy (1987), Inglorious Rebellion (1971), and Blood Royal (1979). Earlier, he had translated novels by Georges Simenon.
The authors he worked with included Rose Tremain, Susan Hill, Isabel Colgate, Paul Theroux, and William Boyd. Sinclair-Stevenson became Boyd's publisher in 1970, with Any Human Heart. Boyd told the Bookseller: "It was a long and enduring friendship. We had regular lunches, year on year. He was a vitally important figure in my career, picking my book of short stories, On the Yankee Station (1981), out of the slush-pile and commissioning my first novel, A Good Man in Africa (1981)."
Author Julian Evans, who started his career as an editor and quit publishing after 10 years to write his first book, Transit of Venus: Travels in the Pacific, said, "Christopher gave me my first opening in the book world as an extremely junior editor, telling me he thought editors should have modest salaries but generous expense accounts, so you could meet and entertain potential authors."
Evans added that what characterized Sinclair-Stevenson was "his loyalty and enthusiasm, his attention and wisdom--as well as joyful lunches and decent advances. He would read a manuscript as soon as he received it, arrange lunch and offer plenty of praise. He embodied a civilized era of publishing that now looks like an irretrievable golden time, in which an editor's judgement, not sales figures, determined whether he'd take you on as an author."
Francis Bennett, managing director of Marble Hill Publishers, was Sinclair-Stevenson's boss in the 1980s and they remained close friends. "Many writers owe the start of their careers to Christopher's gift for spotting true talent early on," Bennett said. "He was a wonderful editor and agent, always loyal to his authors. He may be a representative of a publishing world that has passed but his achievements deserve to be celebrated."