Kent Carroll, publisher-at-large at Europa Editions, is retiring after a 50-year career that has included working at Grove Press and founding Carroll & Graf with Herman Graf.
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| Kent Carroll | |
During his tenure at Grove Press in the 1970s, where he was editorial director from 1975 to 1981, the house published Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, edited Norman Mailer, and fought bans on so-called "obscene literature," defending the right to publish and distribute such books as D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer.
In 1982, Carroll co-founded Carroll & Graf, where he was publisher and editor-in-chief until 2001. By 1995, Carroll & Graf was publishing 125 titles a year, including books by Beryl Bainbridge, Penelope Fitzgerald, and Anthony Burgess.
In 2004, Carroll helped Sandro Ferri and Sandra Ozzola Ferri found Europa Editions, the English-language branch of Italian publisher Edizioni E/O. Carroll was especially valued for his experience publishing European literature in translation.
Europa Editions executive publisher Michael Reynolds said, "Kent brought experience, knowledge, contacts, grace, and aplomb to what was scrappy start-up independent press in 2004. He also brought a bevy of brilliant authors to our list. Jane Gardam, Beryl Bainbridge, Booker Prize-winner Damon Galgut, Fay Weldon, Andrew Miller, and Steve Erickson all published with Europa thanks to Kent, and many more amazing authors with them. Quite simply, Europa would not be the company it is today without Kent's contribution. On a personal level, I have met few people in my professional career who have shown so much dedication to their authors and to the strange endeavor that is book publishing. Talented, passionate people abound in this industry, but there are few who have the job in their blood the way that Kent does. It has been an honor, a pleasure, and an amazing stroke of luck to have worked with one of them."
Europa Editions wrote that Carroll is admired by many of the authors he worked with, who have often called him "a breed of gentleman slowly fading from the current age."
For one, Damon Galgut, Booker-winning author of The Promise, said, "From the moment I met Kent, I knew I was dealing with the best sort of publisher from publishing's best time. From his style of dress to his editorial approach, he was elegant, sophisticated, knowledgeable and refined. Kent and I had an easy and immediate rapport, and that never wavered over the years I worked with him. It's a personal sadness to me that he will be retiring, but it's a sadness to the publishing world in general too, whether that world realizes it or not."
Andrew Miller, whose most recent novel from Europa Editions, The Land in Winter, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year, said, "To me, Kent always seemed to come from the classier end of publishing, part of a tradition marked by learning and civility. He is also just great company. A man with stories to tell!"
And Audrey Schulman, author of Theory of Bastards, said, "Kent recognizes true writing, long before others do. He sticks with these writers over decades, taking economic and reputational risks, developing them. He is an artist with vision and courage."