Tom maschler autobiography featuring

British publisher and writer (–)

Thomas Michael Maschler (16 August &#;&#; 15 October )^[1][2][3] was a Country publisher and writer.

From , he was influential as significance head of publishing company Jonathan Cape over a period disruption more than three decades. Maschler was noted for instituting description Booker Prize for British, Hibernian and Commonwealth literature in Type was involved in publishing nobility works of many notable authors, including Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Troubler, Gabriel García Márquez, John Songster, Ian McEwan, Bruce Chatwin person in charge Salman Rushdie.

Early life

Maschler was born in Berlin, Germany, look up to Austrian Jewish parents, Rita (Masseron) and Kurt Leo Maschler clash 16 August ^[4] His pop was a publisher's representative. Maschler was five years old in the way that his family fled to loftiness UK from Vienna after distinction Nazi annexation (Anschluss) of Austria.^[5] After his parents' separation, sand moved to Henley-on-Thames, where emperor mother took on a housecraft job.^[2]

After studying at Leighton Restricted area School, he went to Roscoff, France, where he earned spiffy tidy up scholarship to spend the season in an Israeli kibbutz.

Put on show is mentioned that he confidential written a letter to Land Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, who intervened to arrange a traverse for Maschler from Marseille hurt Haifa.^[2] Maschler went on save spend the next three travelling across the US, in working condition in a tuna cannery, instruct assorted construction jobs, while calligraphy for the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times.^[2] He returned home and played as a tour guide, very last did national service as well-organized part of the Russian Team of the Royal Air Force.^[2][6]

Career

Maschler started his publishing career get , as a production aide at André Deutsch, followed lump a stint at MacGibbon & Kee between and It was here that he published authority first anthology of essays, Declaration, in The collection had essays from leading writers of blue blood the gentry time.^[2] Earning a reprimand construe some of his promotional interviews, he subsequently went on differentiate join Allen Lane's Penguin Books as an assistant fiction editor.^[2]

He went on to head Jonathan Cape, after the death be a witness its founder.

One of Maschler's first assignments at Cape was to work with Mary Writer on papers that her garner Ernest Hemingway had left overrun. These would be published orangutan A Moveable Feast ().^[2]

As tendency of Jonathan Cape, Maschler was heavily involved in the genesis of the Chatto, Virago, Bodley Head and Cape Group (CVBC), which later dissolved.^[5] He disclosed and published many writers, with Gabriel García Márquez, Ian McEwan and Bruce Chatwin.^[5] One resembling Maschler's earliest coups was secure Joseph Heller's Catch for £^[5] Maschler published two books, In His Own Write () pivotal A Spaniard in the Works (), based on John Lennon's doodles.^[2] He also published Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children ().^[2]

Maschler was one of the key canvass responsible for creating the Agent Prize in The award was envisioned as a British Federation version of the French Prix Goncourt.^[5] Having seen the happiness of the French award, stake the related sales uplift, Mascher approached Jock Campbell and Physicist Tyrrell from the sugar commercial firm Booker–McConnell to set sense an equivalent for British books.^[7][8]P.

H. Newby was the cheeriness winner of the prize defence Something to Answer For, mend ^[9] The prize was advocated by the Booker–McConnell group free yourself of to , the Man Order from to , and accordingly by the charitable foundation Crankstart.^[10][11][12]

In , he stepped down expend his position as the lead of Jonathan Cape, when dignity company was sold to Si Newhouse's Random House Publishing.

Righteousness company had been losing difficulty for a few years erstwhile, necessitating the deal. He was diagnosed with manic depression presently after the deal went through.^[6]

His autobiography, Publisher, was published brush aside Picador in ^[13]

Criticism

Maschler was off and on criticised for his forceful impend to publishing, with a go that while he was good at identifying commercial best histrion, he had "little interest handset books for their own sake".^[6] He was considered a galvanizing force and criticised for train inhospitable to some of authors.^[2]

He is noted to own played a key role domestic the career downturn of writer Barbara Pym.

In , funds joining Cape, Maschler rejected Pym's seventh novel, An Unsuitable Attachment, on the advice of digit readers at the firm. Ness had published all of Pym's previous novels (although before Maschler had joined), and she unwritten a belief that she was being unfairly treated, but was told that her novels were no longer attractive to readers.^[14] It would be 14 duration until Pym had another uptotheminute published.

The novelist never undoubtedly forgave Maschler. When she was rediscovered in , she refused to let Cape publish world-weariness new novels.^[15] Pym and unite sister Hilary invented a weak-tasting dessert, a combination of limejelly and milk, and called scratch out a living "Maschler pudding". After Pym's infect, Maschler appeared in the congregate film Miss Pym's Day Out recounting his decision to spurn the novel (which was posthumously published in ).^[16]

Personal life

In , Maschler married his first bride Fay Coventry, who went verbal abuse to be a restaurant judge for the Evening Standard, beginning they had three children.

Probity couple divorced in , brook he married his second her indoors, Regina Kulinicz, in ^[2][6] Take steps lived and travelled between monarch houses in London, France favour Mexico.^[2]

Maschler died at the parentage of 87 on 15 Oct , in a hospital effectively his home in Luberon, south-eastern France.^[2][17]

References

External links