Alexander Stuart Frere

Alexander Stuart Frere (born Frere-Reeves; 23 November 1892 – 3 October 1984) was an English publisher who was highly influential in the interwar and post-Second World War period. He was chairman of the board of William Heinemann Ltd and helped guide some of the century's most significant authors to worldwide prominence.

Early life and education Alexander Frere-Reeves was born in Dulwich, then part of Surrey, the son of Alexander Wilfred Reeves and Mary Stewart Frere. His mother was the daughter of Henry Tobias Frere, a first-class cricketer. He was known as Alexander Stuart Frere from a young age, and in 1939, he officially dropped "Reeves" from the family surname.

He read economics at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he was editor of the literary magazine Granta. and was also made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in France.

In 1929, he became managing editor at Heinemann, where he would nurture works from some of the greatest English-language writers of the 20th century, including Graham Greene, Thomas Wolfe, Sinclair Lewis, Somerset Maugham, D. H. Lawrence, Michael Arlen, Nevil Shute, Noël Coward, John Steinbeck, Georgette Heyer, Anthony Powell, and Eric Ambler.

In 1927, he married journalist Patricia Marion Caldecott Wallace, the daughter of writer Edgar Wallace. They had two sons, Alexander and Vice Admiral Sir Toby Frere, and a daughter, Elizabeth Frere Jones, who moved to Brooklyn, New York.

He died in hospital in Kent, aged 91, of complications after undergoing surgery for a broken hip sustained in a fall.