Curtis Brown

Albert Curtis Brown was an American journalist who was the London correspondent for The New York Press. He also ran a press syndication agency. He started representing authors seeking publishing opportunities in Europe and the Americas.

The first deal he transacted was selling serial rights in John Oliver Hobbes’s The Vineyard. The literary agency element of Brown’s business was accommodated alongside his press agency in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. In 1914, Curtis Brown opened its first international office in New York; subsequently, offices were opened in Paris, Berlin, Milan and Copenhagen.

During this period, Brown carried out agency business on behalf of a large number of well-known writers such as Kenneth Grahame, A. A. Milne and D. H. Lawrence. It also worked on behalf of prominent figures of the day including Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.

Curtis Brown wrote an autobiography called Contacts – published by Cassell in 1935. He ran the agency until 1935 when he was succeeded by his son Spencer Curtis Brown. Spencer ran the agency until his retirement in 1968 when he sold it to an investment company.

After Brown family ownership

The agency was instrumental in establishing the reputations of several British and American writers, including John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Norman Mailer, C. P. Snow, Angus Wilson, Lawrence Durrell, Gerald Durrell, Gerald Butler, Kingsley Amis, Elizabeth Bowen and Isaiah Berlin.

In 1953 Spencer Curtis Brown Black head hunted Kitty Black and she became chief play reader at Curtis Brown. She played golf and used her connections to find clients that included Somerset Maugham and Samuel Beckett. She was involved with the noted production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in 1956. She notably told John Osborne to "think again" about his play Look Back in Anger (1956) that would later transform British theatre.

Management buyouts

The agency was bought back by its management team in 1982.

In 1995, Jonathan Lloyd was recruited from the publishers HarperCollins to become managing director and two years later Nick Marston joined from rival agents AP Watt to begin the new film, theatre and television department.