flemmings | (no subject)

I may have to buy my own copy of The Book of Forgotten Authors because even if I take notes, I forget the exact write-up, and may find myself putting a library hold on a domestic tale of smothering horror instead of a classic thriller written by a woman.

Though speaking of 'written by a woman', this is written by a man, which is the only reason I can think of why he includes Georgette Heyer as a forgotten author. Given that he's also a Brit, I have no idea why he also includes those household names Margery Allingham, John Dickson Carr, and Edmund Crispin. Man clearly doesn't move in the same circles I do. Did wonder if it was a generational thing but no, Fowler is a mere three years younger than I am. Maybe he believes nobody reads the above authors now except for people with literate boomer parents who passed their libraries on to the kidlings. But I'm a boomer and I got Ronald Firbank from my preWW1 mother.

(Really, either she was a very strange woman or I was a very odd child, and I still don't know which. Who gives an eleven year old Swinburne and Sappho for Christmas, along with Louisa May Alcott and Antonia Forest's school stories?)

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I saw that some years ago in the local indie bookshop and said a more accurate title would be 'The Book of Authors not previously terribly well-known to the author of this book, but by no means what one would call forgotten':

includes several whose works are still in print and probably have never been out of it, but perchance under the radar of a bloke writer? (Delafield, Heyer, and Pym, for starters.)

There has just this week been an academic conference on Firbank in London - someone I met years ago via LJ was presenting.

Some of the entries may come down to 'can I buy this author easily? No' but several- Heyer amongst them- default to 'would I buy this book? Hell no, the cover is too pink' which is about as blokeish as they come.

How lovely that Firbank has ascended to Academia.

The classic thriller written by a woman could also be a domestic tale of smothering horror...

Only too likely. Read with caution.