The paternalistic treatment of authors by editors in the Maxwell Perkins era described in Part 1 of this article produced many inequities, for publishers took advantage of many authors who were too ignorant, shy, or well-bred to demand good terms of their editors. Knowing that most authors write for love, publishers tended to assume that they didn’t care about writing for money.

Resentment toward publishers over their exploitation of authors created the conditions for the rise to power of literary agents. Read how everything changed, and how we define editors in the 21st century.