Listening to Herbert Clyde Lewis
Herbert Clyde Lewis listened to unheard people. In his first novel, Gentleman Overboard, Henry Preston Standish falls off a ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Unnoticed, his fall seals his fate: by the …
Reflections
Who Owned This Book? Helen Welshimer
After tracing the inscription in my copy of Gertrude Trevelyan’s Appius and Virginia through the remarkable life of its owner, Elizabeth Seeber, years ago, I often look into the person behind the name written in …
Publishing Pilgrimage
About a year ago, I became a publisher. It was an act of desperation. Back in March 2016, as part of my second year of reading exclusively the work of neglected women writers, I took …
The Slippery Subject of Best Book Lists
The Guardian recently tested the Pavlovian conditioning of the literary corners of the Internet by releasing a list of the 100 Best Novels compiled from the ten-best lists solicited from 172 novelists, historians, memoirists, and …
The Pleasures of an Old Book: Benjamin Haydon’s Autobiography and Memoirs
So many pleasures in an old book. A while ago, I started browsing through a handsome 1926 edition of The Autobiography and Memoirs of Benjamin Robert Haydon published by Peter Davies (the Peter of …
In Search of Virginia Faulkner
I have a book coming out in January. It’s a biography of Virginia Faulkner, a writer even many followers of this site have never heard of. So, a book about a woman nobody’s ever heard …
Neglect and the Risks of Simple Answers
Recently, a new press joined the growing field of reissue publishers. Quite Literally Books, a New York-based firm, debuted in April 2025 with three novels: Plum Bun by Jessie Redmon Fauset (1929); The Home-Maker by …
We Must Rescue Forgotten Geniuses If We are to Read Them
Apoorva Tadepalli published an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times recently, titled “We Need to Read the Forgotten Geniuses, Not Rescue Them.” As anyone who’s familiar with this site can imagine, this was an …
Philip Roth and the “Writers from the Other Europe” Series
In the spring of 1972, fascinated by the life and work of Franz Kafka, Philip Roth decided to visit Prague. He returned the following year to see how writers were managing to work under “conditions …
A Conversation with Álvaro Santana-Acuña, author of Ascent to Glory
I learned about Álvaro Santana-Acuña’s new book, Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic, from Michael Orthofer’s review on his Complete Review site, and immediately purchased …
Who Owned This Book? Elizabeth Seeber
I often wonder about the people whose names I find written in copies of old books I buy, but I rarely do anything more. But I was so impressed by G. E. Trevelyan’s Appius and …
Odd Women in the City
In her recent book, The Odd Woman and the City, Vivian Gornick aligns herself with what she calls the Odd Women, taking the phrase from George Gissing’s novel, which, in turn, took it from the …
Embarking on Pilgrimage, by Dorothy Richardson
I recently embarked upon my longest voyage into the sea of neglected women writers, a journey through the thirteen volumes and over two thousand pages of what is easily the most neglected great serial novel, …
The Year of the Neglected Woman Writer, Part Two
A year ago, I made a public pledge to devote 2015 to covering the works of neglected women writers. I was reacting to Phyllis Rose’s comments in her 2014 book, The Shelf, who was, in …
2015, the Year of the Neglected Woman Writer
In my recent post on Phyllis Rose’s latest book, The Shelf, I mentioned that Rose’s comments about the continued challenges faced by woman writers was making me think that I should set aside 2015 as …
Extreme Reading: Phyllis Rose’s The Shelf (2014)
I kick myself for letting the publication of Phyllis Rose’s The Shelf, subtitled, “From LEQ to LES: Adventures in Extreme Reading,” go unremarked, for it’s likely the most prominent celebration of neglected books to come …
An Audiobook Landmark
I want to veer off topic for a moment to take note of a remarkable accomplishment that seems to have gone largely without notice. I’ve been a big fan of audiobooks ever since I discovered …
What Makes a Book “Neglected”?
D. G. Myers, associate professor of English and religious studies, just posted a fine and admiring review of John Fante’s novel, Full of Life on his always interesting A Commonplace Blog. In passing along a …