Middlemen rewrites literary history from the perspective of one of its most important but least visible figures: the literary agent. Chronicling the story of agents in the United States from the 1950s to today, Laura McGrath uncovers their critical role in the making of American literature. From the famed three-martini lunch to the Frankfurt Book Fair, Middlemen takes readers behind the scenes to show how agents influence what we read. Weaving together original archival research, data analysis, and interviews with scores of agents and other publishing professionals, Middlemen demonstrates that agents—eighty percent of whom are in fact women—are much more than “middlemen.” As intermediaries between author and publisher, agents act as advocates, matchmakers, negotiators, and tastemakers, and they must balance artistic values with the commercial imperatives of publishing conglomerates.

Laura McGrath is an assistant professor in the English Department at Temple. Dr. McGrath specializes in computational literary criticism and contemporary American literature. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Michigan State University. Prior to joining the faculty at Temple, she was the Associate Director of the Literary Lab at Stanford University. Her research and teaching interests focus on American literature post-1945, digital humanities and cultural analytics, literary sociology, and contemporary literary production.