Charles Pick and Wilbur Smith
A new archive of personal and business documents belonging to the publisher and literary agent Charles Pick reveals a unique insight into the industry.
Pick’s career spanned seven decades, during which time he nurtured, published and sold writers including Wilbur Smith, JB Priestley, Graham Greene and Charles Dickens’ great granddaughter Monica Dickens. He died in 2000, aged 82.
Now his memoirs, correspondence, diaries, photographs, taped interviews, and newspaper cuttings have been donated to the University of East Anglia by his son, Martin Pick.
More than 20 boxes of business and personal correspondence provide a colourful insight into the workings and characters of the publishing world from the 30s through to the 90s.
Charles Pick began his glittering publishing career in 1933 as an office boy, when he landed a job addressing envelopes at Victor Gollancz. He became an innovative salesman and publicist and went on to work at Michael Joseph before becoming chair of the Heinemann Group, where he remained until his retirement in 1985.
The archive provides a very personal account of Pick’s life and career in the changing world of publishing.
His unpublished memoirs reveal chapters on friends, colleagues, and acquaintances including Roald Dahl, George Orwell, JD Salinger, Karen Blixen, Catherine Cookson, Wilbur Smith, Noel Coward, Robert Maxwell, and Penguin Books founder Allen Lane.
Meanwhile in a series of taped interviews he reminisces about his career and reveals his unique personal touch, which resulted in long and fruitful relationships with authors.
And files of correspondence show detailed print and distribution arrangements, serial rights and in-house publishing politics.
Martin Pick said: “The relationship my father had with his authors was legendary and I am very pleased to be able to donate such a unique archive to the University of East Anglia.
“His dictated memoirs and interviews taped for the British Library give a real sense of the man and his vision. His diaries, letters, obituaries, photographs and newspaper cuttings can be used to piece together a detailed history of the publishing industry between 1933 and 1999.”
Prof Jon Cook, director of Creative and Performing Arts at UEA’s school of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, said: “We are hugely grateful for this generous donation. This is a particularly rich research resource for biographers, or anyone researching the history of publishing.”
The Charles Pick Archive will be open to the public from Monday, March 12, and can be viewed by appointment. It will be held in the UEA Archives alongside a growing number of literary archives which includes those of Doris Lessing, Lorna Sage, JD Salinger, Malcolm Bradbury and Roger Deakin. For more information about the collection visitwww.uea.ac.uk/is/archives.
The university’s Creative Writing programme counts Booker Prize-winners Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Anne Enright among its graduates. It has just been awarded a Queen’s Anniversary Prize – the UK’s most prestigious higher education award, given to those who can demonstrate outstanding work at a world-class level.
Charles Pick defined his proudest achievement as helping a number of now well-known and respected authors at the start of their careers. A Charles Pick Fellowship was created at UEA in 2001 to build on his commitment to supporting promising new writers.
The Fellowship gives unpublished writers time to develop or complete a substantial piece of work during a six month stay at UEA. To find out more visitwww.uea.ac.uk/lit/fellowships/charles-pick-fellowship
1/ Martin Pick is available for interview. For more information about the archive, including notes from Martin Pick and a list of archive contents, or to arrange to view the archive, please contact Lisa Horton in the UEA Press Office on 01603 593007 or email l.horton@uea.ac.uk.
2/www.uea.ac.uk/creativewriting. Further information about UEA archives can be found atwww.uea.ac.uk/is/archives.
For more information about the university’s creative writing programme visit
For more on the Queen’s Anniversary Prize and the creative writing programme’s 40th anniversary, visit www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2011/November/CWqueensaward