British publisher Tom Maschler, who became literary director of Jonathan Cape in 1960, a month after Cape's death, and remained chairman of the company until it was acquired by Random House in 1988, died October 15, the Bookseller reported. He was 87. In addition to launching the careers of many literary lights, including Joseph Heller, Philip Roth and Gabriel García Márquez, Maschler was also one of the key figures credited with conceiving the idea of the Booker Prize.
Describing him as "the King of British Publishing," Michal Shavit, publishing director for Jonathan Cape, said Maschler was a "genius, a maverick, a legend, he published some of the greatest writers of the last century. His influence and his brilliance will be felt in British culture for decades if not centuries to come. It's such a sad loss that he has gone, but I am immensely grateful to him for everything he did to make Cape the great imprint it is, and to all the joy he has brought to so many readers around the world through the books and authors he published."
Dan Franklin, former publishing director at Jonathan Cape, said: "Tom was without doubt the most brilliant British literary publisher of his era. He could not only spot great writing, but he knew how to package it and to market it. He was a brilliant salesman. And by inventing the Booker Prize, he created a market for literary fiction that has persisted to this day. Márquez, Pynchon, McEwan, Fowles, Dahl, Amis, Roth, Heller, Chatwin--who else has ever had a list like it?"
Author Julian Barnes observed: "Tom was a whirl of a publisher, fun, noisy, smart, always zealous for books and writers; he loved running the coolest publishing house in London, and it enjoyed it too."
The Guardian noted that Maschler "presided over Cape like a colossus, the list a roll-call of some of the 20th century's great names in fiction, prize-winning heavyweights whose British and Commonwealth contenders would routinely carry off the Booker prize he had created in 1969 to rival the Prix Goncourt. But, in addition to literary fiction and nonfiction, Maschler was a dab hand at commerce.... Still, Maschler was more admired than liked. The publisher Patrick Janson-Smith, who acquired paperback rights to many Cape titles, regarded him as 'a tainted genius with the gift of being a stranger to self doubt--rather like Jeffrey Archer, whom he published.' "
Maschler stepped down as a director of Cape in 1997, "and in 2006 a trip to Zambia gave him the idea for the Book Bus to bring books to children there, working with local teachers and volunteers to increase literacy and get children reading," the Guardian wrote. "By 2020, there were six sponsored buses--including Charlie and Matilda, named after Dahl characters--adorned with [Quentin] Blake's artwork, the operation having expanded to Malawi and Ecuador."