Fig Tree pre-empts Miller's 'vibrant' debut

Fig Tree has pre-empted rights to Joanna Miller’s debut novel, which follows the unlikely friendship between four women who are among the first ever to matriculate at Oxford University, in the aftermath of the First World War. 

Helen Garnons-Williams, publishing director, acquired world English rights to The Eights from Marina de Pass at The Soho Agency. Fig Tree will publish as a lead title in hardback in summer 2025. Rights have also been pre-empted in Germany and sold at auction in France. 

The synopsis reads: “Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1,000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students. Burning with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms in Corridor Eight of St Hugh’s College. Beatrice, Dora, Marianne and Otto (collectively known as The Eights) have come here from all walks of life – driven by their own motives, each holding tight to their secrets – and are thrown into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship.” 

Garnons-Williams said: “Joanna Miller’s vibrant, richly-layered novel is a celebration of female friendship, a love-letter to academia, to a time and a place and to the women who fought to be there. Marianne, Dora, Otto and Beatrice stole our hearts, and the twists and revelations as their stories unfold make The Eights as compelling as it is transporting. We are hugely excited to be publishing it at Fig Tree and to welcome Joanna to the list.” 

Miller added: "I am incredibly grateful to Marina for championing The Eights with such passion. She has found the perfect home for the novel at Fig Tree. Helen and her colleague Ella Harold are brilliant to work with and I have learnt so much from them. I feel very fortunate to have such a talented team behind my debut and cannot wait to introduce Marianne, Dora, Otto and Beatrice to readers.” 

Miller studied English at Exeter College, Oxford, and later returned to complete a PGCE in Secondary English at The Department of Educational Studies. After 10 years as a teacher and literacy adviser, she set up an award-winning poetry gift business called Bespoke Verse. Her rhyming verse has been filmed twice by the BBC and in 2015 she won The Poetry Prize, run by Bloomsbury Publishing and the National Literacy Trust. She has been a speaker at Poetry Corner at the London Book Fair and collaborated with National Poetry Day on a competition to encourage hidden voices. In 2021 she graduated from the Faber Academy and was accepted on the Escalator Talent Development Scheme at The National Centre for Writing.