In 1987 Faith Evans, who has died aged 83, set about realising the concept of a small literary agency with a distinct identity, akin to the list or imprint of a publisher. It would focus on ideas and the kind of books that would enable her to combine her editorial, publishing and business experience with making a living. This meant looking out for and thinking up projects to which she could contribute, and which accorded with her political views. The agency was to have fewer authors than most – a dozen rather than several dozen – so she could give them the attention they needed.
She launched her firm, Faith Evans Associates, in shared premises in Dryden Street, Covent Garden. Around this time, she was a juror in a trial in which I was the defending barrister at Knightsbridge crown court. She thought I was a good communicator as a defender of the underdog, and that if I could just translate that on to the page, then I could write.
Initially I said no, but then we met by chance on Euston station when I was boiling with rage over a case that showed so clearly that the law was male – the product of male perceptions and experience – and so often failed to provide justice for women. This time I said yes: Faith took Eve Was Framed to Carmen Callil, then at Chatto & Windus, who published it with great elan in 1993.
The actor Harriet Walter and the feminist historian Sheila Rowbotham are among those encouraged by Faith to add a new string to our bows. She became not only our agent but also a great friend.
Other projects to come out of Dryden Street were Stolen Years (1990), the autobiography of Paul Hill, one of the Guildford Four, written with Ronan Bennett; Prisoner in Baghdad (1992) by Daphne (Dee) Parish, written with Pat Lancaster; and The Enemy Within (1994), Seumas Milne’s account of the 1984-85 miners’ strike.
Further moves were made, in 1994 to new offices in Clerkenwell and finally, in 1998, to the upper floors in her home in Crouch End, north London. Her list included Melissa Benn, Eleanor Bron, Cleo Laine and Lorna Sage, whose magnificent memoir of life on the Welsh borders, Bad Blood (2000), won the Whitbread prize for biography. Fourth Estate celebrated its 20th anniversary with a new edition.
Born in Nantwich, Cheshire, but brought up in Oswestry, Shropshire, Faith was the daughter of Monica Sage (unrelated to Lorna), a dance and gym teacher, and Edgar Evans, a dentist. Her parents were interested in the arts, and Faith was involved in dance, amateur dramatics and music.
From Oswestry girls’ high school she went in 1960 to Reading University, where she studied French. She also developed her interest in theatre, acting in productions of Sartre and Pirandello, often alongside the man who was to become her lifelong partner, John Stokes, later professor of modern British literature at King’s College London.
On graduating in 1964, Faith went to work for the publisher John Murray in central London. After a year she moved on to become an assistant to Ed Victor, a glamorous figure in the publishing house of Weidenfeld & Nicolson, then the liveliest publisher in London. There Faith learned how to make books from scratch. George Weidenfeld’s trick was to think up a big idea – Faith’s first assignment was Great Interiors – then get the in-house team to write a sample text, research illustrations, mock up a design and then persuade a famous author to come on board. The result was an irresistible package that would go to the Frankfurt book fair, and worldwide distribution would follow.
Later at W&N she worked for Tony Godwin, previously of the radical retailer Better Books. He had a phenomenal instinct for spotting and shaping a book, whether literary or popular, and took a punt on Faith, getting her to edit translations of Françoise Sagan’s novels and the later works of Simone de Beauvoir. He also introduced her to members of the African National Congress exiled from South Africa, including Ruth First and her husband, Joe Slovo. Faith encouraged Ruth to write a biography of the South African writer Olive Schreiner (1980). Ruth became a friend, as did the anti-apartheid activist Ros de Lanerolle, who went on to run the Women’s Press.
In 1972 Faith moved to André Deutsch, where, working with Diana Athill and Piers Burnett, she helped look after a diverse list that included VS Naipaul, John Updike, Molly Keane, Jean Rhys, Timothy Mo and Marilyn French. The networking and mutual support organisation Women in Publishing came out of meetings in 1979-80, with Faith, Gail Rebuck and Helen Fraser among its founders. Dedicated imprints such as Virago and Women’s Press were making waves with books on women’s experience of the world, but mainstream houses were still dominated by men, and this was reflected in many of the publishing choices and the judgments brought to bear on writers.
Efforts to alter the internal cultures of publishing caused frictions in many workplaces, and Faith left Deutsch in 1981. For the next five years she was a freelance, reviewing for the Observer and working part time with Liz Calder at Jonathan Cape, where they published the UK edition of Gloria Steinem’s Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.
Faith also translated works by the Belgian writer Madeleine Bourdouxhe, bringing out their understated clarity of vision. The short story collection A Nail, A Rose (1989) and La Femme de Gilles (1992) were among her first successes as an agent. I was fortunate that Eve Was Framed was another project close to her heart in those early days, as was Roger Mugford’s Dog Training the Mugford Way (1992). Once she entered semi-retirement, she still had a considerable backlist to maintain.
She is survived by John and her brother, Sam.
• Faith Evans, editor, translator and literary agent, born 15 June 1942; died 30 October 2025
