Alexander Stuart Frere CBE (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.
[1] After Cambridge, Frere worked as a journalist for the London Evening News until he was recruited by Doubleday in 1923 to join its subsidiary William Heinemann Ltd.[1][6] 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.
[2] Frere had a flair for detecting talent, and encouraging it, and the gift of establishing friendships with the people he liked and respected, among whom were most of his authors.
He prided himself on publishing authors rather than books only.In 1920, Frere began an affair with the married Elizabeth von Arnim, nearly 30 years his senior.