Curtis Brown (1866-1945)
Founder & President of Curtis Brown Ltd., Literary & Talent Agents, London
He was born "Albert Curtis Brown" in Lisle, Broome Co., New York, but early on in life dropped his first name. He started his career in 1884 as a reporter for the Buffalo Express (previously owned/edited by Mark Twain) covering police courts in the afternoon and helping a proofreader at night. For the next ten years, he gained further experience as a gossip columnist, telegraph editor and music critic before being appointed Assistant Editor for the Buffalo Sunday Express, leaving in 1894 to become Editor of the New York Press. In 1898, he was posted to London as its correspondent and ended up representing the Chicago Tribune and other American newspapers there too.
His arrangement with The Press allowed him to sell weekly illustrated feature articles by the page as well as shorter articles (apart from cabled news) to the Sunday editions of any American newspapers outside of New York. In 1898, he interviewed Pearl Craigie who wrote under the pen name John Oliver Hobbes. She said she'd written a new novel, The Vineyard, and suggested that he sell it for her at 10% commission. The next day, he bumped into the editor of The Pall Mall Gazette, (then owned by William Waldorf Astor) who said he was seeking a smart society serial. Brown sold him The Vineyard at a handsome figure, and in the following year (1899) he founded Curtis Brown, Ltd., Literary Agents, of London, that continues to this day as one of the world's leading agencies.
Briefly joining forces with J. Hughes Massie, they first made a name for themselves representing American authors in England. Massie went out on his own in 1913 (famously gaining Agatha Christie as his client) while Brown established an office in New York City (347 Madison Avenue) in 1914 and continued as the firm's president until 1941 when he sold the controlling interest in New York to Alan C. Collins, but stayed on as vice president. After his death, his only surviving son, Spencer Curtis Brown, continued as the firm's president in London with offices at 6 Henrietta Street in Covent Garden.
His influence saw him become an intimate friend with many of the leading figures of the day in literature, politics and society. Among his friends he counted Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Lloyd George, President Woodrow Wilson, George Bernard Shaw, D.H. Lawrence, John Galsworthy, and Sir Max Beerbohm. His own memoirs, Contacts (1935) provide not only a fascinating glimpse into his own life, but also into the lives of the famous and brilliant of his day, many of whom he knew on first-name terms.
His arrangement with The Press allowed him to sell weekly illustrated feature articles by the page as well as shorter articles (apart from cabled news) to the Sunday editions of any American newspapers outside of New York. In 1898, he interviewed Pearl Craigie who wrote under the pen name John Oliver Hobbes. She said she'd written a new novel, The Vineyard, and suggested that he sell it for her at 10% commission. The next day, he bumped into the editor of The Pall Mall Gazette, (then owned by William Waldorf Astor) who said he was seeking a smart society serial. Brown sold him The Vineyard at a handsome figure, and in the following year (1899) he founded Curtis Brown, Ltd., Literary Agents, of London, that continues to this day as one of the world's leading agencies.
Briefly joining forces with J. Hughes Massie, they first made a name for themselves representing American authors in England. Massie went out on his own in 1913 (famously gaining Agatha Christie as his client) while Brown established an office in New York City (347 Madison Avenue) in 1914 and continued as the firm's president until 1941 when he sold the controlling interest in New York to Alan C. Collins, but stayed on as vice president. After his death, his only surviving son, Spencer Curtis Brown, continued as the firm's president in London with offices at 6 Henrietta Street in Covent Garden.
His influence saw him become an intimate friend with many of the leading figures of the day in literature, politics and society. Among his friends he counted Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Lloyd George, President Woodrow Wilson, George Bernard Shaw, D.H. Lawrence, John Galsworthy, and Sir Max Beerbohm. His own memoirs, Contacts (1935) provide not only a fascinating glimpse into his own life, but also into the lives of the famous and brilliant of his day, many of whom he knew on first-name terms.
One of the first successful books which he sold was Man's Place in the Universe by Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, who theorised that man occupied the central place in the universe. He surprised the Countess of Oxford & Asquith (wife of the former Prime Minister) when he informed her that he could get £250 for an article she'd written about Prime Minister William Gladstone. He sold a sizeable portion of the works of Winston Churchill (a prolific writer who authored 43-books in 72-volumes) and negotiated a price of £25,000 for the final memoirs of Prime Minister Lloyd-George to The London Telegraph. One of his most important sales was that of the hitherto unpublished Life of Our Lord by Charles Dickens, for which £40,000 was paid at the rate of almost $15/word, and among the achievements of which he was most proud were marketing Margaret Kennedy's novel The Constant Nymph and R.C. Sherriff's poignant play, Journey's End. Other clients included Daphne du Maurier, Sumner Welles, Gen. Mark W. Clark, Richard Llewellyn, Rachel Field, Ethel Vance, Sinclair Lewis, Robert Nathan, H.G. Wells, Vita Sackville-West, Ogden Nash, Eric Ambler, Eve Curie, Clemence Dane, Susan Glaspell, Eric Knight and Ellery Queen.
In 1890, he married Caroline Louise Lord, who was also a native of Lisle in Broome County, New York, before her family moved to Buffalo. She was the daughter of William Delafield Lord and served as President of the American Women's Club of London (1916-38) at 46 Grosvenor Street. They had three children and lived between 27 Cheyne Walk in London and "Peck Farm" at Whitney Point, New York, where he died. He and his wife never relinquished their American citizenships and were frequent visitors to the States.
