Felicity Rubinstein

I started my career in books working for a small literary agency in New York. Ten years later, having worked in publishing on both sides of the Atlantic, I left my job as Managing Director of Macmillan Publishers London to create a brand-new author’s agency, together with Sarah Lutyens. From the start we worked collaboratively with each other and with all the other agents who have joined us over the years.

The agency flourished and in 2009 we took the unusual step of opening an independent bookshop which was regularly cited as one of the most beautiful bookshops in the world. The agency took up residence behind sliding bookshelves in the basement of the shop which gave us superb insights into how readers choose books as well as creating a showcase for our authors. By 2023, the agency had outgrown the space and, with a move into separate offices, we handed over ownership of the bookshop to Daunt Books, although our links with the shop remain close and our clients continue to benefit from the association.

My client list is as varied as my reading taste; the only criteria – across the board with fiction, non-fiction and even cookery is that the writing has to delight me. I am particularly on the lookout for non-fiction projects that show or explain new worlds and ideas to me. The best of which inevitably shed light on our own lives and times.

In 2024, I am excited about the publication of multiple award winner Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s long-awaited biography of the Duke of Buckingham - the ultimate Jacobean influencer and is written in Lucy’s idiosyncratic and brilliant narrative style. There is a new book from Adam Phillips, ON GIVING UP and from America, THE SWANS OF HARLEM an eye-opening and sometimes tear-jerking story of five black ballerinas who broke the mould with the Dance Theatre of Harlem in the 1970s. Also, IN MY TIME OF DYING, the great Sebastian Junger’s electrifying short account of his own near-death experience and the history, science and, ultimately paranormal explanation of his and other survivors accounts. In cookery, there will be COMFORT the new cookbook from Yotam Ottolenghi, and from novelist Simonetta Wenkert, the enchanting story of her family run Italian restaurant on a remote corner of a Kilburn thoroughfare.