Ike Williams, ‘the original Bostonian literary agent,’ dies at 86
By Bryan Marquard Globe Staff
Lane Turner/Globe Staff/File
John Taylor Williams, known to all as Ike, "was the original Bostonian literary agent," said author John Spooner, a longtime client and friend.
Ike Williams called the stack of yet-to-be-read books that grows taller next to a bed “guilt mountain,” though no one could imagine him ever feeling much remorse.
Boston’s most visible literary agent for decades, he seemed to be the best-read person clients, colleagues, and friends had ever met, or ever would. Reinforced shelves at his home bore the burden of mountains of books he had already finished.
“I think he was the original Bostonian literary agent,” author John Spooner said of Mr. Williams, a pioneer of the idea that Boston, with its rich writing heritage, could be as important a home for literary agents as New York City, the nation’s publishing capital.
“Being a literary agent in Boston was exactly the right thing for him, and many of us, including me, were beneficiaries,” said writer and Harvard University professor Howard Gardner, another of Mr. Williams’s clients. “He was very special.”
A cofounder of the former Boston literary agency Kneerim and Williams, John Taylor Williams — known to all by his nickname, Ike — died December 26, 2024 in the Cambridge house he bought in 1968. He was 86 and his health had been failing, including his eyesight, which those who loved him knew was an impossible loss to bear.
A longtime civil rights advocate and activist since his early years as a lawyer, before becoming an attorney-literary agent hyphenate, Mr. Williams “was always standing up for the downtrodden and the challenged parts of society,” Spooner said.
“The major thing that defined him was his wanting to give back,” added Spooner, a longtime friend. “He did so much pro bono work. It always amazed me how much he did for different causes.”
Yet Mr. Williams found time to follow his passions without intruding on the attention he showed writers.
To each conversation Mr. Williams brought an expansive intellect and saw connections others didn’t immediately notice among all manner of subjects.
“Talking with him always expanded the frame and deepened the depth of a conversation because of what he brought to it,” Lawrence-Lightfoot said.
“He was a big figure, literally and figuratively,” she said of Mr. Williams, who stood several inches above 6 feet. “He was tall and beautiful with a silver mane of hair — and cosmopolitan and sophisticated. And he had a big mind.”
They bonded despite the distance between Mr. Williams’s Ivy League education and MacDonald’s boyhood in Boston’s Old Colony housing project.
“When they met him, people I knew would be like, ‘Oh my God, he’s your agent?’ But he was so down to earth,” MacDonald said. “He cared about social justice.”
Mr. Williams “was more than just a literary agent. He was a friend, somebody you could count on showing up,” said Gardner, a psychologist and professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Attentive to the smallest details of even casual encounters, Mr. Williams “was always thinking, even when you weren’t, about what might have literary value,” Gardner said. “He was thinking for you even when you weren’t thinking for yourself.”
Born John Philip Taylor in Cambridge on June 19, 1938, Mr. Williams was the son of Audrey Reber Taylor Williams. He was a boy when his father, Paul Taylor, died. His name was legally changed to John Taylor Williams after his mother married Merton Williams.
His family moved to Weston and Mr. Williams attended Middlesex School in Concord, “which became a place dear to my dad’s heart,” said his son Caleb Taylor Williams of Jamaica Plain.
“He grew up around a lot of kids who were wealthier than he was,” said Mr. Williams’s son Jared Taylor Williams of Rockingham, VT., who added that pursuing a challenging academic path “took a lot of grit.”
A school friend nicknamed Mr. Williams after lightweight boxing champion Ike Williams. Majoring in government, Mr. Williams received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College as a member of Kirkland House and the Class of 1960. After an unhappy detour into banking, he received a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1965 from what is now the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School.
Mr. Williams joined the Haussermann, Davison & Shattuck law firm in Boston, and his clients included antipoverty, civil rights, and prisoner advocacy organizations, along with the Little, Brown publishing company.
When he joined the firm of Palmer & Dodge, he began representing more publishing clients. He also was on boards of the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Huntington Theatre Company, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, not far from his summer home in Wellfleet.
In 1990, he and Jill Kneerim (Radcliffe College Clas of 1960) founded the Kneerim & Williams literary agency.
“She’s been about as good a friend and partner as anyone in the world could have been lucky enough to have,” Mr. Williams told The Boston Globe when she died in 2022.
Known for his advocacy for women, Mr. Williams “was a true mentor in every respect,” said Katherine Flynn, a literary agent who started out at Kneerim & Williams and is now with Calligraph.
“He was really thoughtful about mentoring women and bringing us up,” Flynn said. “When I was taking my maternity leave, he was saying, ‘Are you sure that’s enough time?’ The only person in my life saying that was my 77-year-old boss.”
In 1966, Mr. Williams married Leonora Hall, an artist and teacher known as Noa. Her family was part of the Cape’s bohemian world that Mr. Williams chronicled in his book. She died in 2014.
Mr. Williams later married the writer Caroline Courtauld of London and Cambridge who, like him, had been widowed. She was drawn to “his amazing intelligence, his perception, which was very acute, and his wisdom” — and his wit.
“It could be quite sardonic, and sometimes quite difficult to pick up,” Courtauld said. “But you always knew it was there, particularly with politics.”
Though work was consuming, Mr. Williams “did everything he did for the family and he loved being home,” Jared said. “He was kind of a domestic creature at the end of the day.”
“He loved living in a wooden house and sitting in the backyard and taking the train to work,” Caleb said. “I think he found a kind of joy in the consistency he built, and I think that built a fabric of safety for us.”
In addition to his wife and two sons, Mr. Williams leaves another son, Nathaniel Hall Taylor of Wellfleet; and five grandchildren.
A gathering to celebrate his life will be announced.
