Derek Johns, publisher turned agent to literary stars such as Sebastian Barry, Linda Grant, Rohinton Mistry, and Andrew O'Hagan, has died, the Bookseller reported. He was 78. Johns was also the author of the novels Wintering, Wakening, and The Billy Palmer Chronicles, as well as Ariel, a literary biography of another of his clients, travel writer Jan Morris.
He began his career as a bookseller at Hampstead's High Hill Bookshop, "which for decades was a center of literary London thanks to its charismatic owner Ian Norrie (Johns would write the Guardian obituary for Norrie when the bookseller passed away in 2009)," the Bookseller noted. Johns later moved to New York to work as an editor for Random House. He returned to London in positions that included managing director of the Bodley Head and Granta.
Johns became an agent in 1992, joining AP Watt, which he ran with Caradoc King until they sold the business to United Agents in 2012. He retired a year after the sale, telling the Bookseller at the time that "my years with AP Watt have been the happiest of my career" while vowing "to remain in the world of writers and writing, but in different ways." From 2003 to 2006, Johns was president of the Association of Authors Agents.
In addition to writing books, he was on the advisory committee of the Booker Prize, trustee of English PEN, and patron of the Queen's Park Book Festival. The Bookseller noted that Johns also continued to consult on his former clients, working this year in association with Matthew Marland at RCW to sell Sebastian Barry's latest novel, The Newer World, to Faber.