The Young Immigrunts, by Ring Lardner (1920)
This is a guest post by David Quantick. “My parents are both married and ½ of them are very good looking.” This is the story of two very different writers, one an American comic writer …
Guest Posts
Mightier than the Sword, by Alphonse Courlander (1912)
This is a guest post by Dr. Sarah Lonsdale. On the final page of Mightier than the Sword (1912), a novel about journalists and newspapers, the protagonist dies a lonely death in the middle of …
Red Rose: A Novel Based on the Life of Emma Goldman (“Red Emma”), by Ethel Mannin (1941)
This is a guest post by Joanna Pocock. I can’t imagine many biographical novels about anarchists begin with the subject lying in bed as a child, hand between thighs, pleasuring herself. But Ethel Mannin’s Red …
Faith, Hope, No Charity, by Margaret Lane (1935)
This is a guest post by Sarah Lonsdale. The novel won a prestigious international literary prize in 1936, beating George Orwell, Graham Greene, Stevie Smith and Sylvia Townsend Warner, amongst others; but you’ve probably never …
The Room Opposite by F.M. Mayor (1935)
This is a guest post by the founder of Solar Press. By rights, F.M. Mayor should be one of England’s most beloved novelists. The Rector’s Daughter was a bestseller upon its initial release and her …
The Forgotten Short Fiction of Edward Thomas
This is a guest post by Irfan Shah It started, of course, with his poetry, predictably, with his best-known work, “Adlestrop”, and inevitably, with the famous, final lines that spell-bind like few others: And for …
Marie Beginning, by Alfred Grossman (1964)
This is a guest post by the novelist Rob Palk. Some books are neglected in their old age, others — a majority — are neglected from birth. Alfred Grossman, the author of Marie Beginning (1964), …
French Polish, by P. Y. Betts (1933)
This is a guest post by Christopher Hawtree. SWISS MOUNTAINS AND WELSH HILLS “I guess if you thought a little more about sex your circulation would be a whole lot better; there’s nothing like sex …
The Case is Altered, by William Plomer (1932)
This is a guest post by Christopher Hawtree. The Figures in the Boarding-House Carpet Many a novel has sprung from a paragraph in a newspaper. Notable among them was that New York Times snippet about …
Madam, by Ethel Sidgwick (1921)
This is a guest post by Dr. Sarah Lonsdale. As a long-time student of early twentieth century novels, I must confess to at first being utterly confounded when I started reading Madam. I couldn’t make …
Jenny, by Sigrid Undset (1911)
This is a guest post by Kristin Czarnecki. I have known of Norwegian author Sigrid Undset all my life. My parents got my name from Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, a monumental achievement for which she …
Sonia: Between Two Worlds, by Stephen McKenna (1917)
This is a guest post by Dr. Sarah Lonsdale. By March 1917 Britain had her back against the wall in a way she had never dreamed, nor expected even at the outbreak of War in …
The Fox of Maulen by Hans Helmut Kirst (1968)
This is a guest post by Stephen Bloomfield In the late 1950s and early 1960s, popular German-language authors were experiencing a resurgence: Gunter Grass, Heinrich Boll, Hans Fallada, Wolfgang Koeppen, Ernst Junger — even the …
The Work of Oliver Byrd, by Adeline Sergeant (1902)
This is a guest post by Dr. Sarah Lonsdale. Here’s a Victorian writer’s conundrum for you. Option one: you publish nearly 100 novels and stories – many bestsellers – in your lifetime. You make a …
Wilding Graft by Jack Clemo (1948)
This is a guest post by Louis Hemmings. It’s not every day that you might turn on a television without referring to any guides and get to see a dramatised documentary based on a mystical, …
The Little White God, by Edwin Brock (1962)
This is a guest post by Stephen Bloomfield Edwin Brock only wrote one novel. In 1962, after eight years as a Police Constable 258 of the Metropolitan Police between 1951 and 1959, he published The …
Robert Harling
This is a guest post by Stephen Bloomfield Robert Harling? Steel Magnolias and The First Wives Club? American playwright, actor and film producer? No – not that one. This one: Robert Harling, British author of …
Don’t Keep the Vanman Waiting by Adam de Hegedus (1944)
This is a guest post by the novelist and childrens’ book author Eric Brown ‘The summer of nineteen-thirty-nine was a thoroughly rotten one.’ So opens Don’t Keep the Vanman Waiting, a chapter of autobiography by …
Gumshoe, by Neville Smith (1971)
This is a guest post by David Quantick. “I got the idea from a detective novel. I read a lot of detective novels…” The 1970s were full of the 1940s. In fashion, Halstead and Yves …
The Poppy Factory (AKA No Man’s Land) by William Fairchild (1989)
This is a guest post by the novelist Cliff Burns. Back in the 1990s, I was browsing my way through an independent bookstore in Saskatoon (now, sadly, defunct) and came across a title I hadn’t …