Category Archives: british

Kabuff or Wunderkammer?

Posted on July 5, 2019 by

Fictional publishers often appear at international book fairs. The setting gives writers the chance to introduce new characters, engineer plot twists and inject the frisson of drunken conversations and illicit sex. The Frankfurt Kabuff, Blaire Squiscoll’s recent work, adds a … Continue reading →

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In 1954 quite a few bright publishers secretly believed this

Posted on February 15, 2018 by

Muriel Spark’s fictional recollection of the London publishing world in A Far Cry from Kensington is a meandering tale that tells us something about the ways in which young ladies in the 1950s acquired “a job in publishing”, lost it, … Continue reading →

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Tite and Snobby or Doolittle and Dalley?

Posted on February 13, 2018 by

The River Girl by Wendy Cope appeared in 1991 with lovely brush illustrations by Nicholas Garland. The narrative poem tells the tale of a young writer who, inspired by the river girl muse, becomes a great literary success. This does … Continue reading →

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On the shelf

Posted on August 14, 2017 by

In Austin Dobson’s A Bookman’s Budget of 1917, the compiler reproduces one of his own poems (On the Shelf first published in Methuen’s Annual) concerning the history of the books on the aforementioned shelf. The poem contains the following lines … Continue reading →

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Angel’s publisher and life-long friend

Posted on June 28, 2017 by

There are two men in the life of the eponymous Edwardian novelist in Elizabeth Taylor’s 1957 novel Angel. She adores and marries one, the painter Esmé Howe-Nevinson. He is a wastrel and a philanderer, loses a leg in the 1914-18 … Continue reading →

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Mr Big Nose, our publisher

Posted on March 16, 2017 by

I have been sent a couple of pages of The 13-Storey Treehouse, one of which contains a picture of Mr Big Nose, a publisher who is demanding his book from the hapless authors. They make the following observation. We were … Continue reading →

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I apprehend caducity

Posted on January 4, 2017 by

“I apprehend caducity” says Bennett in Margaret Drabble’s The Dark Flood Rises, a book that shows us different aspects of ageing. The cast of older people write and read books, and they are not always against the digital, even though … Continue reading →

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