My colleague and friend Marilyn Malin, who has died aged 86, was a doyenne of children’s literature, both as a publisher and as an agent. For many years the managing director of Methuen Children’s Books, she was fair and considerate, generous spirited and open to new ideas – indeed, she was ahead of her time.
As well as being an excellent caretaker for the Kenneth Grahame and AA Milne estates, she was responsible for the acquisition of many notable titles, including several early books by Floella Benjamin (now Lady Benjamin), and stories and poems by the then unknown Caribbean writers James Berry and John Agard.
She was a real talent spotter – she saw the potential of War Horse by Michael Morpurgo, which she published in Magnet, Methuen’s new paperback list, in 1983. It went on to become both a hugely successful play and film.
In 1985 Marilyn left Methuen and for a few years published many of her loyal authors under an eponymous imprint at André Deutsch. Her drive was incredible, and in 1989 she established herself as a literary agent – Marilyn Malin Consultancy.
Thin and appearing stooped through scoliosis, Marilyn’s apparent physical frailty belied a mind as smart as a whip. She continued to attend the Bologna and Frankfurt book fairs and travelled indefatigably to the US. As an agent she was a champion for her authors – really pushing and standing up for them as the many testimonies from them confirm. She never retired.
Born in Golders Green, north-west London, Marilyn was the daughter of Irene (nee Littenberg) and Albert Malin. Having fought in the first world war, her father went into the furniture business.
She went to North London Collegiate school and after winning a state scholarship attended the University of London. She then joined the children’s publisher Blackie as a secretary in the late 1950s. In the early 60s she moved to Methuen Children’s Books as assistant to the renowned publisher Olive Jones, became an editor, and, when Olive retired in the late 60s, managing director of the company.
Though Marilyn came from an Orthodox Jewish family (her Littenberg grandfather was an acclaimed cantor at the Dunstan Road synagogue in Golders Green), she considered herself an agnostic. Writers whom she admired and whose views she identified with in particular were Primo Levi and Isaiah Berlin. Marilyn was an intellectual in the truest sense of the word. She made a deep impression on all who knew her.
She is survived by her sister Shirley.
