Tim Curnow

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Tim Curnow
Born	(1944-10-18) 18 October 1944 Christchurch, New Zealand
🏫 Education	Auckland University
💼 Occupation	Bookseller, publisher, literary agent
📆 Years active	1963–2001
👔 Employer	Paul's Book Arcade, A H Reed Ltd (Reed Publishing) Curtis Brown Australia
👩 Spouse(s)	Heather Holyoake (m. 1963), Lea Risbey (m. 1974)
👶 Children	2
👴 👵 Parent(s)	Allen Curnow, Betty Curnow

Tim Curnow, Literary Agent

Tim Curnow (born 18 October 1944) is a New Zealand literary agent. He began his career as a bookseller and publisher in New Zealand before becoming Managing Director of Curtis Brown Australia, the largest and oldest literary agency in Australasia. He occupied this position from 1971 to 2001, as an agent to numerous writers in Australia and New Zealand.

Early life

Born in Christchurch, New Zealand, Tim Curnow is the youngest son of poet Allen Curnow and painter and printmaker Betty Curnow. His older brother is Wystan Curnow, academic, poet, art critic and curator. His late sister Belinda ran the craft gallery Textures in Takapuna, Auckland. He grew up amid a lively alternative cultural scene involving writers, artists, composers, theatre people and intellectuals. Among his parents’ friends were poet and publisher Denis Glover and those associated with the Caxton Press, composer Douglas Lilburn, author and theatre director Ngaio Marsh, and painters Rita Angus, Louise Henderson, and Colin McCahon.

In 1951 the family moved to Auckland. He attended Westlake High School along with Michael Gifkins, writer, editor and later literary agent; Gifkins recalled in a radio broadcast that he and Curnow locked the fifth grade rugby scrum together, and later, in 1985, “Tim Curnow is in Australia and is Janet Frame’s literary agent while I edit her autobiographies; in a sense…we are still locking the same scrum.” Curnow went on to study English, Italian and Anthropology part-time at the University of Auckland while working as a photographic and cartographic technician in the Geography Department.

Career

Bookseller

In early 1963 Curnow left university to work in the warehouse of book distributors Hick Smith and Sons in Auckland. After first being seconded to run a week-long “pop-up” bookshop in the Student Union building of the University of Auckland, Curnow joined Paul’s Book Arcade in Auckland as a bookseller. The shop set up in 1955 was a sister establishment to the family bookshop run in Hamilton by David Blackwood Paul and Janet Paul, and was described by visiting English publisher Stanley Unwin as “among the 14 best in the world.” It stocked a wide range of US imported books on politics, literature and art including the publishers of poets of the Beat Generation and City Lights Books. When mentor Ian Free left Paul’s to run the new University Bookshop at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, in 1966, Curnow took over as shop manager. With no designated university bookshops in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch, Curnow organised for Paul’s to set up a "pop-up" bookshop at Victoria University of Wellington.

Publisher

In 1966, Curnow became the first Educational Editor for New Zealand’s largest book publisher A.H. and A.W. Reed in Wellington, expanding their primary programme, introducing secondary and tertiary programmes and establishing the Reed Education imprint. Focusing on new directions in education, particularly in the secondary school area and following examples such as the Yale University Mathematics Group and the Cambridge Mathematics Group, Curnow established The Reed Mathematics Group which in 1969 produced the first in the Shape of Mathematics series. Other Reed groups followed in subjects such as English, music, science, history and home economics leading to a series of innovative textbooks. Curnow published the first series of colour books on New Zealand art including painting, architecture and Maori rock art, and an anthology of contemporary Maori writing which included the first published story of novelist Witi Ihimaera.

As an educational publisher, Curnow used New Zealand-focused approaches to texts and design including the use of art and photography as visual stimuli in textbooks over the whole range of subjects. In a review article in the New Zealand Bookseller and Publisher (June/July 1970), educationalist Jack Shallcrass noted “the passing of the dull unattractive economy-style school textbooks’ and welcomed ‘the new era of high-quality, imaginative and artistically illustrated new look.”

Curnow moved to Sydney in 1970 to take up the first editorial position in Reed’s burgeoning Australian operation. After twelve months as Managing Editor in Sydney, Curnow, aged 27, was offered the opportunity to take over Curtis Brown Australia, a subsidiary of the London Curtis Brown, and Australia’s first literary agency. The Australian office had been founded two years earlier by Peter Grose who was taking up a position at Curtis Brown in London.

Literary agent

Beginning in 1971, Curnow managed about 40 writers from a home office in Paddington. The agency quickly expanded its list of clients, many acquired through personal references. Coming from both Australia and New Zealand, these clients included novelists, poets, playwrights, writers of non-fiction and for film and television and authors and illustrators of children’s books. When Curnow retired, Curtis Brown represented around 250 clients.

Curnow was actively involved in creating precedents in the form of professional contractual arrangements for writers in Australia – publishing agreements, film and TV Option and Assignment agreements – many of which are still in use. Following precedents, established by Curtis Brown London, of legal documents which gave creators protections and rewards for their copyright, Curnow developed the Australian agency’s own legal documents and negotiated these “boiler plate” agreements with Australian and New Zealand publishers, branches of international publishers and with theatre, film and television production companies.

Curnow was active in selling rights to the rich vein of talent in Australia and New Zealand into the USA, UK, and into many non-English-speaking countries. In collaboration with colleagues in London, Curnow arranged for work by Australian and New Zealand writers to be translated into German, Chinese, Japanese, French, Icelandic, Basque, Catalan, Slovenian, Serbian, Bulgarian and other languages. In 1975 Curnow was commissioned by the Australian Society of Authors to write a guide for writers to effectively market their work, this essay forming part of the Australian and New Zealand Writers’ Handbook.

By 1975, Curnow had been appointed to the Curtis Brown Board of Directors in London, a position he held until retirement in 2001. Curnow’s 25 years’ with Curtis Brown were celebrated by a dinner at the Garrick Club in London in 1996, and when he and his wife attended the centenary celebrations of Curtis Brown in London in 1999 Curnow was the second longest-serving current board member.

The 1970s-1990s were golden decades for Australian writing, publishing, theatre, film and television. The 1970s were particularly exciting times for the arts in Australia as the first Labor government since 1949 under Prime Minister Gough Whitlam doubled funding to the arts in a year and created the Australia Council for the Arts. This period saw many highlights for the writers represented by Curnow at Curtis Brown such as the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to client Patrick White in 1973, the success of playwright David Williamson, the 1990 Jane Campion film An Angel at My Table based on the life of Janet Frame, Michael King’s biography of Janet Frame and many television adaptations such as The Harp in the South by Ruth Park. Curnow retired from the agency in 2001 after 38 years in the book business. Fiona Inglis, took over as Managing Director of Curtis Brown Australia which celebrated 50 years in 2017. It is now an independent company, no longer a subsidiary.

Post-retirement

After his retirement from Curtis Brown, Curnow set up a part-time business to represent a small number of his former clients. In 2001 Curnow was appointed a Peer Advisor to the Literature Board of the Australian Council for the Arts, and in 2003, 2004 and 2007 was an Assessor for the Council’s Literature International Marketing Program.

In 2004, Curnow was a Fiction Judge for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and wrote the Judge’s Report Citations for the Best Novel and Best Book of the Year, Brian Castro’s Shanghai Dancing. His nomination of Ruth Park for a Special Premier’s Award was accepted. In 2004 he was appointed Consultant for the Janet Frame Literary Trust and a Director of the Janet Frame Society (UK).

Notable clients

Clients represented included: During Curnow’s years at Curtis Brown his clients included: Pamela Allen, John Baxter, David Brooks, Ron Brooks, Kenneth Cook, Allen Curnow, Don Dunstan, Dame Mary Durack, Anna Fienberg, Janet Frame, May Gibbs Estate, Stan Grant, Peter Goldsworthy, Barbara Hanrahan, Frank Hardy, Xavier Herbert, A.D. Hope, Donald Horne, Michael King, Christopher Koch, Ray Lawler, Dr David Henry Lewis, Norman Lindsay Estate, Kate Llewellyn, Gabrielle Lord, Elyne Mitchell, D'Arcy Niland Estate, Ruth Park, Maurice Shadbolt, Douglas Stewart, Nancy Wake, Patrick White, and David Williamson.

English and American clients represented in Australia and New Zealand include: James Aldridge, Samuel Beckett, David Butler, Nell Dunn, Sam Shepard, Gore Vidal.

Personal life

In the 1960s, in Wellington, Curnow’s interest in art led to a close friendship with art dealer Peter McLeavey and he helped set up McLeavey’s Cuba Street Gallery. They maintained a lifelong connection. During the mid-1960s, Curnow was involved as Business and Literary Editor of Dispute, a polemical journal of politics and culture, and was an active member of the Princes Street Labour branch of the New Zealand Labour Party.

In 1963, Curnow married Heather Holyoake. This marriage ended in 1969 and in 1974 he married Australian Lea Risbey. They have two sons and two granddaughters.
Special interests are jazz, especially from the 1940s to 1970, travel and Australian Rules football team the Sydney Swans.

Curnow’s great grandfather John Curnow played Australian Rules football while teaching at Scotch College in Melbourne, Australia and before he moved to a teaching post in Auckland, New Zealand in 1874.

Selected articles and publications

Book chapters and entries

• Curnow, Tim (1980) [1975]. "A Guide to Marketing". In Ovenden, Barrie. The Australian and New Zealand Writers' Handbook (2nd, updated ed.). Sydney: A.H & A.W. Reed. Search this book on
• Curnow, Tim (1994). "Connections". In Alley, Elizabeth. The Inward Sun: Celebrating the Life and Work of Janet Frame. Allen & Unwin. ISBN 9781863737203. Search this book on
• Curnow, Tim (2011). "Wielding the Scalpel". In Macklin, Robert. My Favourite Teacher. Sydney, Australia: University of New South Wales Press. ISBN 9781742231624. Search this book on

News and journal articles

• Curnow, Tim (18 December 2010). "So much more than Wombat's mum". Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
• Curnow, Tim (March 2011). "Celebration: Ruth Park". Australian Author. 43 (1): 20–23.
• Curnow, Tim (28 December 2013). "Silver Brumby author Elyne Mitchell was a woman for all seasons". The Australian. p. 16.
• Curnow, Tim (2014). "A Memory from the Agent: Remembering Laurie Clancy". Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (JASAL). Burwood, Victoria, Australia. 14 (4): 16.
• Curnow, Tim (2018). McMahon, Elizabeth; Hamadache, Michelle, eds. "It Started With Alec Hope". Southerly: The Journal of the English Association. Sydney: Brandl & Schlesinger. 78 (1): 196.

References

Books cited

• Sturm, Terry (2017). Cassells, Linda, ed. Simply by Sailing in a New Direction: Allen Curnow: a Biography. Auckland University Press. 732pp. ISBN 9781869408527. Search this book on

• Bohan, Edmund (2005). The House of Reed 1907-1983 : Great days in New Zealand publishing. Christchurch, New Zealand: Canterbury University Press. 311pp. ISBN 187725732X. Search this book on

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