Editing Rupert Hart-Davis (section)

===Early years===
Hart-Davis was born in [[Kensington]], London.  He was legally the son of Richard Hart-Davis, a stockbroker, and his wife Sybil ''née'' Cooper, but by the time of his conception the couple were estranged, though still living together, and Sybil Hart-Davis had many lovers at that time.  Hart-Davis believed the most likely candidate for his natural father to be a Yorkshire banker called [[Gervase Beckett]].<ref name=dnb>Norwich, John Julius, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/73494, "Davis, Sir Rupert Charles Hart- (1907–1999)"], ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 29 November 2008</ref> As a child, Rupert Hart-Davis and his sister [[Deirdre Hart-Davis]] were drawn by [[Augustus John]] and painted by [[William Nicholson (artist)|William Nicholson]] (1912).<ref>{{cite web|title=Rupert and Deirdre Hart-Davis as Children (also known as Children of Mr. and Mrs. Hart-Davis)|url=http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=239953|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180122072702/http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=239953|url-status=dead|archive-date=22 January 2018|website=The Athenaeum|access-date=21 January 2018}}</ref>

Hart-Davis was educated at [[Eton College|Eton]] and [[Balliol College, Oxford]], though he found university life not to his taste and left after less than a year.<ref name=dnb/>

Hart-Davis decided to become an actor, and he studied at [[The Old Vic]], where he came to realise that he was not a talented enough actor to succeed, and he turned instead to publishing in 1929, joining [[William Heinemann Ltd.]] as an office boy and assistant to the managing director Charley Evans. He spent two years with Heinemann and a year as manager of the Book Society; during this period, he built up good relationships with a number of authors and was able to negotiate a directorship for himself at [[Jonathan Cape|Jonathan Cape Ltd]].<ref name=times>''[[The Times]]'' obituary, 9 December 1999</ref>

In his seven years with Cape, Hart-Davis recruited a successful group of authors ranging from the poets [[William Plomer]], [[Cecil Day-Lewis]], [[Edmund Blunden]] and [[Robert Frost]], to the humorist [[J. B. Morton|Beachcomber]]. He was well placed to secure [[Duff Cooper]]'s life of [[Talleyrand]], as Cooper was his uncle.<ref name=times/> As the junior partner at Cape, he had to handle their difficult authors including [[Robert Graves]], [[Wyndham Lewis]] and [[Arthur Ransome]], the last being seen as difficult because of his wife Genia, with her "distrustfulness, venom and guile". Hart-Davis was a close friend of Ransome, sharing an enthusiasm for cricket and rugby. After Cape's death in 1960 Hart-Davis commented to [[George William Lyttelton|George Lyttelton]] that Cape had been "one of the tightest-fisted old bastards I've ever encountered".<ref name=rhdfeb60>Hart-Davis, Volume 4, letter of 20 February 1960</ref> The second partner, [[Wren Howard]], was "even tighter" than Cape,<ref name=rhdfeb60/> and neither of them liked fraternising with authors, which they left to Hart-Davis.

In World War II Hart-Davis volunteered for military service as a private soldier, but was soon commissioned into the [[Coldstream Guards]].  He did not see active service, never being stationed more than 25 miles from London.<ref>Ziegler, p. 117</ref>