Update on Our Literary Estates

Martin Reed

Martin Reed

Martin leads the SoA's Communications team. He oversees our strategic communications and campaign-based activities, including PR, social media, events and partnerships.

The SoA owns or manages more than 50 literary estates – Bernard Shaw and E. M. Forster among them – and uses the income from these to support all of its work.

Our Literary Estates team is always busy managing and selling those rights. Through their efforts the British Library has recently released two classic crime novels by Freeman Wills Crofts, pioneer of the ‘unbreakable alibi’.

Last month the BBC televised a new adaptation of The Go-Between, L.P. Hartley’s best-loved novel, which you can still catch on iPlayer. The BBC also produced a programme on Philip Larkin for their Poetry Season, presented by A. N. Wilson, which featured recordings of the poet reading his work.

Watch out for the National Theatre’s forthcoming production of Waste, Harley Granville Barker’s timeless masterpiece, opening 3 November. And there is still time to catch London Contemporary Theatre’s touring production of Pygmalion.

For Halloween and Christmas gifts, how about these gorgeous new editions of The Ride-by-Nights and Snow by Walter de la Mare.

24 May 2023

Celebrating the gamut of prose, poetry and children’s literature, across 11 awards, including the inaugural ADCI (Authors with Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses) Literary Prize shortlist

11 May 2023

Celebrated crime writer announced as keynote speaker for annual Society of Authors’ Awards ceremony on 29 June

10 May 2023

Following a vote by authors in Wales, we welcome Cath Barton and Aaron Kent to the SoAiW steering committee. We thank outgoing committee member Alison Layland for all her hard work