Harold Matson was an American literary agent

Literary agent

A literary agent is an agent who represents writers and their written works to publishers, theatrical producers and film producers and assists in the sale and deal negotiation of the same. Literary agents most often represent novelists, screenwriters and major non-fiction writers...

 and founder of the Harold Matson Company. His clients included Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...

, C. S. Forester

C. S. Forester

Cecil Scott "C.S." Forester was the pen name of Cecil Louis Troughton Smith , an English novelist who rose to fame with tales of naval warfare. His most notable works were the 11-book Horatio Hornblower series, depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic era, and The African Queen...

, Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler

Arthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria...

, Malcolm Lowry

Malcolm Lowry

Clarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.-Biography:...

 William Saroyan

William Saroyan

William Saroyan was an Armenian American dramatist and author. The setting of many of his stories and plays is the center of Armenian-American life in California in his native Fresno.-Early years:...

, Allen Drury

Allen Drury

Allen Stuart Drury was a U.S. novelist. He wrote the 1959 novel Advise and Consent, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1960.- Early life & ancestry :...

, Robert Ruark

Robert Ruark

Robert Ruark was an American author and syndicated columnist.- Early life :...

, Herman Wouk

Herman Wouk

Herman Wouk is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author of novels including The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance.-Biography:...

, Evan S. Connell

Evan S. Connell

Evan Shelby Connell, Jr. is an American novelist, poet, and short story-writer. He has also published under the name Evan S. Connell, Jr. His writing has covered a variety of genres, although he has published most frequently in fiction.In 2009, Connell was nominated for the Man Booker...

, Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor

Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...

 and Richard Condon

Richard Condon

Richard Thomas Condon was a prolific and popular American political novelist whose satiric works were generally presented in the form of thrillers or semi-thrillers...

.

Career

The New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

called Matson "one of the most influential figures in book publishing." The $106,000 sale of the paperback rights to Robert Ruark

Robert Ruark

Robert Ruark was an American author and syndicated columnist.- Early life :...

's novel Something of Value

Something of Value

Something Of Value is a 1957 drama directed by Richard Brooks and starring Rock Hudson, Dana Wynter and Sidney Poitier.-Plot:The movie, based on the book of the same name by Robert Ruark, portrays the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. It shows the colonial and native African conflict caused by colonialism...

set a record at the time. On his death, Ruark left his Rolls-Royce car to Matson.