Felicity Bryan obituary
Dynamic literary agent with an extraordinary gift for nurturing new talent 

Liz Thomson
Mon 22 Jun 2020

Felicity Bryan had a bulging contacts book, which included such names as Francis Crick, James Naughtie, Lucy Worsley, Roy Strong, Mary Berry, Carlos Acosta, Diarmaid MacCulloch and Edmund de Waal

Felicity Bryan, who has died of cancer aged 74, was the founder in 1988 of the distinguished literary agency Felicity Bryan Associates. She was liked and respected in equal measures in the world in which she had worked since 1972, when she joined Curtis Brown.

Becoming a literary agent was a chance move, an early third act seemingly unrelated to what had gone before, yet for which her prior careers, as art historian and journalist, were the perfect preparation. Her fellow agent Andrew Nurnberg observed: “Ultimately, you need to discover and burnish quality, which Felicity did. She had this extraordinary ability to find authors. She was smart as a whip and straight as a die.”

Bryan had an intense curiosity about every aspect of life and a gift for friendship which resulted in a bulging contacts book – which included such names as Francis Crick, James Naughtie, Lucy Worsley, Roy Strong, Mary Berry, Carlos Acosta, Diarmaid MacCulloch and Edmund de Waal.

Her personal passions were art, opera, dance and gardening, on which she wrote two books: The Town Gardener’s Companion (1981), based on columns she wrote as gardening correspondent of the London Evening Standard, and A Garden for Children (with Elisabeth Luard, 1986). However, she ranged widely, an intellectual who wore her erudition lightly and found her metier in Oxford, where she set up her fledgling agency when marriage and motherhood rendered her commute to London tiresome.

In those days, few agents struck out on their own, certainly not women and doing so outside London went against the grain. But FBA prospered, making stars of many who might otherwise have remained cloistered beneath the city’s dreaming spires.

Bryan did not want to be “provincial” – indeed, was determined to be truly international, spending time in far-flung markets. Within a few years, she had made her mark: Rosamunde Pilcher, who had followed Bryan from Curtis Brown, broke out of her romantic fiction niche with The Shell Seekers, knocking The Bonfire of the Vanities from its perch atop the US bestsellers.

Karen Armstrong, a new signing, provided Bryan with her first international non-fiction bestseller, A History of God (1994). And Iain Pears, a local art historian and journalist, sold in a score of languages with his novel An Instance of the Fingerpost (1997).

“I think with my nose,” Bryan liked to say. Critically and commercially, FBA was set fair and, in 2001, Catherine Clarke joined from Oxford University Press, her representation of AC Grayling and Michael Wood, and the children’s authors Meg Rosoff and David Almond, opening a new chapter.

Bryan was born in Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, the second of three daughters of Paul Bryan, a war hero who served for three decades as a Tory MP, and his wife, Betty (nee Hoyle). The girls were educated at Benenden school in Kent, “naughty, rebellious” Felicity joining when her sister, Elizabeth, was deputy head girl.

Their childhood was overshadowed by their mother’s bipolar disorder, which also affected Felicity’s daughter Alice, who took her own life aged 22. Bryan became a trustee of Equilibrium: The Bipolar Foundation. The sisters were all achievers: Elizabeth a paediatrician, founded the Multiple Births Foundation. Bernadette was among the first women to be ordained. Both died young, sharing the BRCA gene that can increase the chance of developing cancer. The cancer that killed Felicity was her fourth.

Bryan was open about fate’s cruelties but never self-pitying. “On to the next disaster,” she would joke, as she planned practically for the long-term future of FBA.

Unsurprisingly, she was not given to introspection, preferring to be busy and living for those she had lost, powered by five hours’ sleep a night. She adored publishing parties and had time for everyone, giving people her undivided attention. “She would always find some spark, something you had in common,” Clarke observed. The publisher Andrew Franklin talks of “a genuine original and a very tough businesswoman who had enormous amounts of fun”.

Bryan graduated as an art historian from the Courtauld Institute in London and began her career as an assistant on Burlington Magazine. It felt “limiting” to her, so she wrote to several Washington correspondents asking if they might need extra help in election year.

Joe Rogaly of the Financial Times offered her $100 a week plus extra for anything written in her own time if she could be in DC in two weeks. She arrived in a city still smoking following the death of Martin Luther King in 1968 and stayed an exhilarating and life-changing two years, building up a portfolio of serious journalism and making lasting friendships.

Among them was the Washington Post reporter Larry Stern, in whose memory she founded the Laurence Stern fellowship with the Post’s Ben Bradlee and the Observer’s Godfrey Hodgson. Over 40 years, fellows have included Cathy Newman, Gary Younge and Jonathan Freedland. This month, it was renamed the Stern-Bryan fellowship in her honour.

Loving the US, Bryan was torn when in 1970 she was offered a full-time position in London on the Economist. She accepted the offer, splurging $1,500 on a round-the-world ticket and sending a final FT dispatch from Laos. She wrote prodigiously for the magazine’s British and American Surveys, invented the Arts Briefs, and joined Women in Media to help encourage more women into the man’s world of serious journalism.

When Graham Watson of Curtis Brown rang, she assumed it was to offer thoughts about Welsh industry for the piece she was writing, but it was an invitation to drinks at the Ritz to discuss his proposal that she inject new lifeblood into the fusty agency. This she did, launching a publishing revolution in the process by persuading the Royal Horticultural Society to partner with Dorling Kindersley to create a series of gardening titles. Hardy perennials now widely imitated, they have sold millions. She established Berry as an author with Mary Berry’s Complete Cookbook (sales now two million-plus) and reinvented Strong as he stepped down from the V&A, proposing The Story of Britain, still popular more than 20 years on.

Personally and professionally, Bryan was a born matchmaker who, said Nurnberg, “never had to pitch a book – it was all down to her irrepressible enthusiasm and personal presentation”.

Armstrong recalls that “Felicity never gave up”, despite her proposal for A History of God arousing “absolutely no interest with any publisher … And somehow her serene and breezy confidence gave me the courage, inspiration - and imperative – to work and write in quite a different way.”

Bryan was appointed MBE this year and announced her retirement earlier this month.

She is survived by her second husband, the economist Alex Duncan, whom she married in 1981, and two sons, Maxim and Benjamin. Her first marriage, to Alasdair Clayre, ended in divorce.

• Felicity Anne Bryan, literary agent, born 16 October 1945; died 21 June 2020

Trade remembers Bryan as 'one of the greats'

Published June 23, 2020 by Katherine Cowdrey

The book trade has continued to pay tribute to literary agent Felicity Bryan, who died on Sunday (21st June) at the age of 74, two weeks on from announcing she was stepping back from day-to-day involvement with the agency she founded.

Baroness Gail Rebuck, chair of Penguin Random House UK, described Bryan as one-of-a-kind and "one of the greats". Rebuck remembered the "legendary summer parties" Bryan would throw, tables laden with food she had cooked herself, as well as one of the most significant books they had worked on together, The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal, which, benefitting from Bryan's championing, "ignited and became a global bestseller".

"Felicity was always an effervescent bundle of energy and enthusiasm which, coupled with her deep intelligence and strategic insight, made for a unique combination in a literary agent," said Rebuck. 

She continued: "When I wrote to congratulate Felicity recently on her well-deserved MBE she replied that she felt boosted by it. I did not know she had quietly been dealing with cancer for over a year and it was typical of her to continue to live life to the full, travelling, entertaining and working, of course, even submitting books till the end.

"Felicity enjoyed great success in her life and was blessed with a wonderful family. She knew great tragedy too but it never dulled her spirit. In her last email to me, dictated to her son, she said she had given up on treatment and wanted to die peacefully at home. She had led a fantastic life and she loved cherishing her authors—her only sadness was that she would not be around to see their books published. How we shall miss this unique woman. Felicity was one of the greats."

Isobel Dixon, m.d. and head of Books at the Blake Friedmann Literary Agency and president of the Association of Authors Agents, said: "It is no exaggeration to say that Felicity Bryan was extraordinary and—a word her close colleagues have often used in talking of her recently—‘magnificent’. I was in awe of her, in the best possible way."

"Felicity Bryan was one of the first agents I met outside of Blake Friedmann, when I attended my first AAA meeting with Carole Blake at the Groucho Club almost 25 years ago," she recalled. "Felicity, with her warmth and interest, immediately made me feel welcome in the industry, and from AAA meetings that followed I soon came to appreciate her keen intelligence and professionalism. Though I did not know her well personally, I have always admired her agenting, business acumen and shining good humour—and from what fellow AAA members have said, I know so many of us feel the same way. With her extraordinary resilience, energy and grace, even in the hardest of times, Felicity was a real beacon in our community. We are grateful for her example and contribution to the literary world. My deepest condolences to her family, friends and authors and her fine colleagues at FBA."

Alexandra Pringle, Bloomsbury's editor-in-chief, said she was a model for "how women could and should work together". "Felicity Bryan always reminded me of a hummingbird—iridescent, vivid, swift, diminutive," she said. "We loved her for all she brought to our world: her enthusiasms and her acuity, her sense and her tenacity, her lipstick and her hats, her joie de vivre and the pleasures she got from a good deal. She showed us how women could and should work together—and how, in the end, nothing matters more than our authors. She shall be very, very much missed."

One of Bryan's authors, Karen Armstrong, paid tribute to her as both "a brilliant and canny agent" and "an extraordinary human being" with an ability "to enjoy life and live it to the full".

Armstrong said it was "no exaggeration" to say Bryan had "made [her] life", and that she had told her so in her final days. "When I look around at my pretty house, at the books I have written on my shelves, and think of all the places I have visited and the people I have met there in so many parts of the world—that is all due to her," said Armstrong. She explained how she was one of the first authors Bryan had taken on when she started her own agency and described how she had "persevered even though the book I had in mind (called A History of God) aroused absolutely no interest with any publisher. But Felicity never gave up. And somehow her serene and breezy confidence gave me the courage, inspiration—and imperative—to work and write in quite a different way."

Agent Cathryn Summerhayes of Curtis Brown said Bryan was "an unbelievably positive champion" for both her authors and staff. "Felicity was one of the smartest, kindest and brilliant agents," said Summerhayes. "I hope in 30 years I can look back and say I achieved even a quarter of all that she did. She always had time for the most junior person in the room, told the best stories and was an unbelievably positive champion for both her incredible list of authors and anyone who was fortunate enough to work on her team. She was wonderful company and her wardrobe of technicolour jackets and sparkling smile ensured she lit up the room at even the dullest of literary parties. She will be hugely missed."

Zoë Pagnamenta, agent at the The Zoë Pagnamenta Agency in New York, recalled how Bryan loved the US and her visits to New York. She herself remembered Bryan as "a wonderful whoosh of energy" and hailed her "an inspiration to us all".

"We’d often meet for breakfast at the beginning of a day which would be packed with meetings," said Pagnamenta. "She loved meeting younger editors as much as more established editors she’d known a long-time. She’d always try to fit in a trip to the opera when she was in town and catch up with friends she’d known for years. She was just a wonderful whoosh of energy. I remember her eagerly meeting up near our new offices in Brooklyn one morning and then enthusiastically catching the ferry to lower Manhattan. She was in a jaunty beret and coat and beaming in anticipation of the boat trip as I left her at the ferry stop. Such spirit, such vim, passionate about good books and fiercely proud of her authors. Spending time with her was co-conspiratorial, galvanizing fun with lots of laughter. She was a dynamic force and an inspiration to us all, kind, loyal and thoughtful."

Catherine Clarke, of m.d. Felicity Bryan Associates, has said her legacy will live on in the agency she founded. "As we mourn the loss of Felicity from our lives, we also look forward, as she did, to all the great opportunities and connections that publishing is about," Clarke said. "Her agency is built on her instincts of putting authors first, on strong collegiality, on sound business practices, on having great fun. It is no contradiction to be based in the beautiful ancient city of Oxford, and to have a truly international outlook. It is one of the things that give FBA its unique character and puts it on a sound footing to flourish, as Felicity always anticipated with pleasure."

Felicity Bryan dies

News - Publishing Monday, 22 June 2020, BookBrunch
Agent dies of cancer at the age of 74

Felicity Bryan, founder of literary agency Felicity Bryan Associates, has died at the age of 74. News of her death came less than two weeks after an announcement that she was stepping down from the agency (BookBrunch story). 

Her husband Alex Duncan and their sons Max and Ben issued the following statement: 

"Our deeply-loved Felicity died on Sunday 21 June, at home as she had wished. 

"In the last few months Felicity has shown more clearly than ever why so many have loved and admired her. Her courage and resilience that have been called on so many times in her life have been manifest in the calm and realism with which she faced her final illness, and in the happiness she said she felt in recent weeks. She showed her joy in life and sense of fun by the delight she has taken in so much since the diagnosis in summer 2019: travelling to Spain twice, to Sicily in November, to Dresden, and to the Jaipur Literary Festival in February; cooking much of the food for a late-summer party in the garden; the honour the Washington Post gave her by renaming the Laurence Stern Fellowship, from now on the Stern-Bryan Fellowship; looking over the summer garden from her bed in her last days; and, stylishly dressed, receiving her MBE on Friday, two days before she died, in a small ceremony at home. 

"She has taken great care to ensure that her authors will be well looked after by her colleagues at Felicity Bryan Associates, and when already very ill she started a series of weekly emails about authors' newly published books whose launches were adversely affected by Covid. 

"She took particular pleasure in the hundreds of messages of farewell, written from the heart by friends and colleagues. 

"As Felicity has asked, there will be a small cremation that will be followed in a few months' time by a memorial event in London, when conditions allow her friends to come together." 

Felicity Bryan worked as a reporter for the Financial Times and the Economist before starting her career as an agent at Curtis Brown in 1972. She founded Felicity Bryan Associates in Oxford in 1988. 

Her authors, as reported in an obituary in the Washington Post, included Karen Armstrong, Mary Berry, Francis Crick, Gerald Durrell, Lindsey Hilsum, James Naughtie, Iain Pears, Rosamunde Pilcher, Edmund de Waal and Sue Stuart-Smith. 

Bryan was an author herself, of books including The Town Gardener's Companion (Collins, 1981), and she wrote a gardening column for the London Evening Standard.