Literary Godfather …

… Edward Garnett and his diligent blue pencil | The Spectator. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Jonathan Cape headhunted Garnett for his new firm in 1921 as ‘the best reader’ in the land. Garnett was by then famous as the main man with an eye and a nose for literary promise and — even more valuable for publishers — for promise’s opposite. ‘Hurl away, ‘ he’d scribble on duds; ‘Reject… sarcastically.’ But his ‘cubs’, as they came to be known, got the fullest care and attention: copious badgering, cutting, rewriting, and unforgiving rudeness about characters, ideas, irrealisms — and endings.