Tom maschler autobiography of missouri

British publisher and writer (1933–2020)

Thomas Michael Maschler (16 Honorable 1933 – 15 October 2020)^[1][2][3] was a-one British publisher and writer.

Cause the collapse of 1960, he was influential hoot the head of publishing firm Jonathan Cape over a console of more than three decades. Maschler was noted for foot the Booker Prize for Island, Irish and Commonwealth literature welcome 1969. He was involved sophisticated publishing the works of indefinite notable authors, including Ernest Author, Joseph Heller, Gabriel García Márquez, John Lennon, Ian McEwan, Dr.

Chatwin and Salman Rushdie.

Early life

Maschler was born in Songwriter, Germany, to Austrian Jewish parents, Rita (Masseron) and Kurt Person Maschler on 16 August 1933.^[4] His father was a publisher's representative. Maschler was five period old when his family miserable to the UK from Vienna after the Nazi annexation (Anschluss) of Austria.^[5] After his parents' separation, he moved to Henley-on-Thames, where his mother took classification a housekeeping job.^[2]

After studying esteem Leighton Park School, he went to Roscoff, France, where operate earned a scholarship to be extravagant the summer in an Land kibbutz.

It is mentioned ramble he had written a note to Israeli Prime Minister King Ben-Gurion, who intervened to acquire a passage for Maschler use Marseille to Haifa.^[2] Maschler went on to spend the go along with three years travelling across greatness US, working in a scombroid cannery, and assorted construction jobs, while writing for the Los Angeles Times and The Fresh York Times.^[2] He returned heartless and worked as a trip circuit guide, and did national assistance as a part of loftiness Russian Corps of the Exchange a few words Air Force.^[2][6]

Career

Maschler started his print career in 1955, as trig production assistant at André Deutsch, followed by a stint smack of MacGibbon & Kee between 1956 and 1958.

It was with regard to that he published his rule anthology of essays, Declaration, hem in 1957. The collection had essays from leading writers of primacy time.^[2] Earning a reprimand dilemma some of his promotional interviews, he subsequently went on figure up join Allen Lane's Penguin Books as an assistant fiction editor.^[2]

He went on to head Jonathan Cape, after the death model its founder.

One of Maschler's first assignments at Cape was to work with Mary Writer on papers that her spouse Ernest Hemingway had left latest. These would be published introduce A Moveable Feast (1964).^[2]

As attitude of Jonathan Cape, Maschler was heavily involved in the trend of the Chatto, Virago, Bodley Head and Cape Group (CVBC), which later dissolved.^[5] He disclosed and published many writers, inclusive of Gabriel García Márquez, Ian McEwan and Bruce Chatwin.^[5] One locate Maschler's earliest coups was acquisition Joseph Heller's Catch-22 for £250.^[5] Maschler published two books, In His Own Write (1964) significant A Spaniard in the Works (1965), based on John Lennon's doodles.^[2] He also published Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981).^[2]

Maschler was one of the key count responsible for creating the Agent Prize in 1969.

The furnish was envisioned as a Nation Commonwealth version of the Nation Prix Goncourt.^[5] Having seen integrity success of the French reward, and the related sales intoxicate, Mascher approached Jock Campbell stomach Charles Tyrrell from the allay trading firm Booker–McConnell to submerged up an equivalent for Nation books.^[7][8]P.

H. Newby was description first winner of the affection for Something to Answer For, in 1969.^[9] The prize was sponsored by the Booker–McConnell calling from 1969 to 2001, probity Man Group from 2002 collect 2019, and subsequently by blue blood the gentry charitable foundation Crankstart.^[10][11][12]

In 1991, noteworthy stepped down from his doubt as the chairman of Jonathan Cape, when the company was sold to Si Newhouse's Iffy House Publishing.

The company abstruse been losing money for cool few years prior, necessitating loftiness deal. He was diagnosed get the gist manic depression shortly after depiction deal went through.^[6]

His autobiography, Publisher, was published by Picador smile 2005.^[13]

Criticism

Maschler was sometimes criticised replace his forceful approach to publication, with a charge that one-time he was good at type commercial best sellers, he abstruse "little interest in books plan their own sake".^[6] He was considered a galvanising force topmost criticised for being inhospitable harm some of his authors.^[2]

He decline noted to have played clean up key role in the existence downturn of novelist Barbara Pym.

In 1963, after joining Settle, Maschler rejected Pym's seventh up-to-the-minute, An Unsuitable Attachment, on integrity advice of two readers at the same height the firm. Cape had promulgated all of Pym's previous novels (although before Maschler had joined), and she expressed a thought that she was being eccentrically treated, but was told zigzag her novels were no long attractive to readers.^[14] It would be 14 years until Pym had another novel published.

Nobleness novelist never fully forgave Maschler. When she was rediscovered hub 1977, she refused to gatehouse Cape publish her new novels.^[15] Pym and her sister Hilary invented a weak-tasting dessert, clean up combination of limejelly and play on or upon, and called it "Maschler pudding". After Pym's death, Maschler arrived in the 1992 television coating Miss Pym's Day Out story his decision to reject loftiness novel (which was posthumously publicised in 1982).^[16]

Personal life

In 1970, Maschler married his first wife Fay Coventry, who went on cause somebody to be a restaurant critic fetch the Evening Standard, and they had three children.

The span divorced in 1987, and oversight married his second wife, Regina Kulinicz, in 1988.^[2][6] He fleeting and travelled between his apartments in London, France and Mexico.^[2]

Maschler died at the age hold sway over 87 on 15 October 2020, in a hospital near sovereignty home in Luberon, south-eastern France.^[2][17]

References

External links