Once popular writers who aren't so popular so more

[kev67]

I have been wondering about authors who were once popular but not any more. For example, C.P. Snow does nor seem very widely read any more. I am not sure that he was ever widely read outside the UK, but he was popular once. Alistair MacClean used to be very popular during the 60s and 70s. Several of his books were turned into films, the most famous of which was The Guns of Navarone. Neville Shute does not seem as popular as he was. Jack London has a who sub-forum dedicated to his works on this website, but his books are not so easy to find in bookshops any more. I have looked for C.P. Snow's books in several bookshops. I found them in The Russian Bookshop near Picadilly Circus in London, which is vast, but not in any others. I could not find any Alistair MacClean books in the Russian Bookshop, but I found two of his books in another very large branch of Waterstones near Charing Cross station. I found a range of Jack London's books in The Russian Bookshop, although not all his books. In the shop near Charing Cross, I only found The Call of the Wild and one other. I could not find either Snow, nor MacClean nor London in any of the big bookshops in Reading.

[Lokasenna]

I've always wondered why William Morris isn't held up as one of our great literary giants. Most people who no anything about literature will know of him, and one or two might even have read News from Nowhere - but beyond that, he's largely ignored. Yet he was a brilliant and prolific writer (not to mention a polymath), and tackled so many different ideas and genres. But for some reason, we remember him (if at all) only for his socialist writings and his textiles.

[kev67]

I didn't realise William Morris wrote literature. I was aware he designed wallpaper prints.

[Emil Miller]

This does pose a problem for those seeking good writing that falls outside of 'classic' status. I can think of quite a few who are now out of print but some authors are still obtainable through print on demand which Foyles in Charing Cross Road will undertake, although it sometimes takes a few weeks before they are able to come up with the goods. Another method is to try Ebay as it's surprising what is obtainable from there. I think that novels are more obtainable than non-fiction works on the print on demand system as I recently had Foyles get a copy of Jennie Gerhardt for me as they have done with a couple of others in the past. They were unable to supply a copy of a book about chess grand masters that was discussed on the forum recently although I haven't yet tried to get it on Ebay where some time ago I managed to get a biography of Jessie Matthews and also The Great Pianists which was last in print in 1963.

Re Jack London: I bought a copy of Martin Eden off the shelf at Foyles not so long ago. It has been reprinted as a Penguin Classic.

[Lokasenna]

I didn't realise William Morris wrote literature. I was aware he designed wallpaper prints.

Oh yes! Huge amounts of literature - he was, amongst other things, the inventor of modern fantasy literature, an entire genre!

[Emil Miller]

Oh yes! Huge amounts of literature - he was, amongst other things, the inventor of modern fantasy literature, an entire genre!

News from Nowhere was a fantasy in its own right.

[Eiseabhal]

A very good poet, Morris. "By the Haystack in the Flood" is one I would recommend .

[PeterL]

Fortunately, libraries seldom throw out books umtil they fall apart. It is still possible to find things by Booth Tarkington and Kennetj Roberts and so on.

[Calidore]

I have been wondering about authors who were once popular but not any more. For example, C.P. Snow does nor seem very widely read any more. I am not sure that he was ever widely read outside the UK, but he was popular once. Alistair MacClean used to be very popular during the 60s and 70s. Several of his books were turned into films, the most famous of which was The Guns of Navarone. Neville Shute does not seem as popular as he was. Jack London has a who sub-forum dedicated to his works on this website, but his books are not so easy to find in bookshops any more. I have looked for C.P. Snow's books in several bookshops. I found them in The Russian Bookshop near Picadilly Circus in London, which is vast, but not in any others. I could not find any Alistair MacClean books in the Russian Bookshop, but I found two of his books in another very large branch of Waterstones near Charing Cross station. I found a range of Jack London's books in The Russian Bookshop, although not all his books. In the shop near Charing Cross, I only found The Call of the Wild and one other. I could not find either Snow, nor MacClean nor London in any of the big bookshops in Reading.

It may depend on what your definition of "popular anymore" is. Alistair MacLean's books may no longer be in print, but he's still a highly regarded writer of adventure thrillers, with several bona fide classics to his name (The Guns of Navarone and Where Eagles Dare come immediately to mind). Sadly, his quality plummeted as his booze intake increased later in life, but Cussler et al wish they could match MacLean's early stuff.

[SleepyWitch]

Oh yes! Huge amounts of literature - he was, amongst other things, the inventor of modern fantasy literature, an entire genre!
That's interesting! I studied News from Nowhere for my graduation exams at uni and none of the sources mentioned this, presumably because Tolkien is usually credited for having invented the fantasy genre.
I loved the ideas in News from Nowhere, although its plot is often criticized as lame.
Will have to make a mental note of his fantasy books and put them on my mile-long to-read list.

[qimissung]

Has anybody here read any A.J. Cronin? He wrote The Citadel and Song of Sixpence. I read the latter as a child and the former after it was made into a miniseries, but I don't think, on the whole, that people read his books much anymore.

[ennison]

Cronin was a good popular writer, creator of Doctor Finlay. He has been accused of plagiarism of Douglas Brown but while that may have been true he was a very prolific writer.

[Lokasenna]

That's interesting! I studied News from Nowhere for my graduation exams at uni and none of the sources mentioned this, presumably because Tolkien is usually credited for having invented the fantasy genre.
I loved the ideas in News from Nowhere, although its plot is often criticized as lame.
Will have to make a mental note of his fantasy books and put them on my mile-long to-read list.

Have a go at The Well at the World's End - it's superb!

[Seasider]

CP Snow's wife Pamela Hansford Johnson was a popular writer. Her best book (inmo) was "the Unspeakable Skipton." Nicholas Montsaratt was also well regarded as an adventure writer. Rosamond Lehmann was once a best seller, especially " Dusty Answer."And Charles Morgan was once thought to be as good as EM Forster. How are the mighty fallen!

[qimissung]

And who is Douglas Brown? There are a lot of them, apparently.

[Emil Miller]

CP Snow's wife Pamela Hansford Johnson was a popular writer. Her best book (inmo) was "the Unspeakable Skipton." Nicholas Montsaratt was also well regarded as an adventure writer. Rosamond Lehmann was once a best seller, especially " Dusty Answer."And Charles Morgan was once thought to be as good as EM Forster. How are the mighty fallen!

Snow initiated one of the biggest rows in academia and beyond with his assertion that there were two cultures and F R Leavis's virulent response. I was very young at the time and it wasn't until later that I discovered what all the fuss was about. It still resonates today as this article from the Daily Telegraph clearly indicates.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5273453/Fifty-years-on-CP-Snows-Two-Cultures-are-united-in-desperation.html

[ennison]

Apologies. Brown was another Scottish author. He wrote "The House With the Green Shutters"

[qimissung]

Apologies. Brown was another Scottish author. He wrote "The House With the Green Shutters"


Thank you. I found him on Wikipedia under George Douglas Brown. That article makes no mention of his book being an influence on or plagerized by Cronin, but reading the description of the book I can see a resemblance between the two.

[Whifflingpin]

Mrs Craik (Dinah Mulock) - Her book "John Halifax, Gentleman" was possibly the most popular book of the Victorian era.

Jane Porter - I think that she only had two books published, but one of them inspired Walter Scott to write historical novels, and the other inspired the social realism of Dickens.

Le Sage - wrote, amongst other things, "Gil Blas", everybody's boyhood favourite before "Treasure Island" (in fact, I think Stevenson states somewhere that Gil Blas was his boyhood favourite.)

On boyhood favourites, two of the most popular authors of the early C20th were A.E. (Sinbad) Dingle and Cutcliffe-Hyne.

Ou sont les neiges d'antan?

[stlukesguild]

Loka... glad you brought up Morris. I have a book of the collected writings of Morris and a couple on his achievements in the visual arts. Like many I came upon him as a result of his efforts in the visual arts... and it should be noted that as an artist he is nearly as undervalued or under-recognized as he is as a writer. Morris not only created wallpaper design:

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_Brooklyn_Museum_-_Wallpaper_Sample_Book_1_-_William_Morris_and_Company_-_page029.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=Brooklyn_Museum_-_Wallpaper_Sample_Book_1_-_William_Morris_and_Company_-_page029.jpg)

He was also a painter:

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_Queen_Guinevere.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=Queen_Guinevere.jpg)

... an architect...

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_The_Red_House_Bexleyheath.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=The_Red_House_Bexleyheath.jpg)

... a master book maker...

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_39499-kelmscott_chaucer-larger.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=39499-kelmscott_chaucer-larger.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_Rubaiyat_Morris_Burne-Jones_Manuscript.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=Rubaiyat_Morris_Burne-Jones_Manuscript.jpg)

...a tapestry and textiles designer...

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_Galahad_grail.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=Galahad_grail.jpg)

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_Sir_Edward_Burne_Jones_and_William_Morris_-_Flora.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=Sir_Edward_Burne_Jones_and_William_Morris_-_Flora.jpg)

... a designer of stained glass windows...

http://i1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/th_Davids_Charge_to_Solomon_by_Burne-Jones_and_Morris_Trinity_Church_Boston_Massachuset ts.jpg (http://s1245.photobucket.com/albums/gg581/StlukesguildOhio/?action=view&current=Davids_Charge_to_Solomon_by_Burne-Jones_and_Morris_Trinity_Church_Boston_Massachuset ts.jpg)

... and much more. Morris built upon both the artistic and socio-political ideas of William Blake. Like Blake, Morris was profoundly interested in medieval art along with the artists of the Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, as well as Morris' follower, Edward Burne-Jones. Morris started his own company to market his designs which became the basis of the "Arts and Crafts Movement". Morris rejected the notion of the "hierarchy of art forms" (the concept that painting and sculpture as "pure" non-practical or utilitarian art forms were inherently superior to the so-called "applied arts"... "crafts"... or "decorative art." This idea would fuel the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements as well as the Modernist Bauhaus School. The appearance of Morris' art and the Medievalist aspects of Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood also had a profound impact upon later illustration... especially child's book illustrations as well as illustration for sci-fi and fantasy.

Along with William Blake and John Ruskin, William Morris feared the inhuman, massed produced aspects of industrialization and felt that Art had a moral worth... both to the artist/creator and to the people who lived with objects of well-crafted beauty as opposed to purely utilitarian objects that were mass produced without the least concern for aesthetics. Clearly Morris ideas predate many of those espoused by the artists and poets of art pour l'art including Gautier, Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, and Mallarme.

One could do far worse that to spend one's time exploring the achievements of Morris.

[Lokasenna]

There really is a serious argument to be made for William Morris being one of the greatest geniuses our species has produced. He really was an incredibly active polymath, and the contributions he made to the various fields in which he involved himself are substantial. As you say, one could do a lot worse than spend time with Mr Morris.

When I finally have a house of my own, and of course a wage, I fully intend to have a Morris room.