Necrology
Charles “Chuck” Thomson Verrill '73
Jul. 16, 1951-Jan. 9, 2022
Charles “Chuck” Thomson Verrill ’73 died on Jan. 9, 2022, in Brooklyn, N.Y., after a long illness. Born in Fall River, Mass., on July 16, 1951, and raised in the Bronx, N.Y., he came to Hamilton from Dewitt Clinton High School. On the Hill, Chuck majored in English and displayed a gift for elegant writing, winning the Thomas McNaughton Johnston Prize in English two years in a row. His first prize-winning essay focused on poet William Butler Yeats, while the second concerned George Eliot’s Middlemarch. It should be no surprise that he chose a career in publishing and became a noted literary agent.
From Hamilton, Chuck moved to Manhattan and worked for Viking Press, later named Viking Penguin, starting out in the junior role of “slush reader,” a newbie who reads unsolicited manuscripts. The name of the job seems to imply the quality of those submissions: he composed numerous rejection letters. In time, he became the assistant editor to Allan Williams, one of Viking Penguin’s principal senior editors. Among the emerging authors under Williams was a young novelist named Stephen King. Following Williams’s death, Chuck took over and developed a long-working relationship with King.
During this period, Chuck married Karen Berley K’73. They had three children, and their marriage lasted 24 years.
In 1989, Chuck was invited to join the literary agency owned by Liz Darhansoff, and two years later he became a partner in the firm known henceforth as Darhansoff & Verrill Literary Agents. As an agent, his responsibilities included finding new submissions, editing finished manuscripts, and, notably, negotiating with publishers on behalf of authors on a range of issues including financial terms, marketing campaigns and promotion budgets, and the quality and appearance of each published work. Chuck’s clients, among others, were the poet Stanley Kunitz, the novelist Abigail Thomas, the author/journalist William Langewiesche, and the megastar storyteller King.
Chuck developed a large number of personal and professional relationships through his career in publishing, while also maintaining connections with his Hamilton classmates. Bob Grilli ’73 observed that he remained both kind and private. A chronic illness finally compelled Chuck to retire at the end of 2021.
Following his death, Darhansoff said that “we’ll so miss his wise counsel and sardonic wit.” King tweeted: “Sorry to say my long-time agent and friend of 40+ years, Chuck Verrill, passed away. … It leaves a huge hole. I loved the guy.”
Charles T. Verrill is survived by his ex-wife, Karen Berley K’73, two sons, a daughter, two grandsons, his brother Peter S. Verrill ’69, and a sister.
