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, …
Reader Recommendations
Reader Recommendations
Neglected books recommended by visitors to this site.
Have a neglected favorite you’d like to have mentioned here? Please email me at editor@neglectedbooks.com.
Johannesburg Friday, by Albert Segal (1954)
Peter Kerr writes from New Zealand to recommend Albert Segal’s first (and apparently only) novel Johannesburg Friday: This must be regarded as a “neglected book”. I came across it by chance in my grandfather’s bookcase. …
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 …
Suggestions for the 1976 Club
For the last few years, I’ve tried to offer some lesser-known suggestions for those interested in taking part in one of the ‘net’s best and biggest collective reading events, Kaggsy and Simon Thomas’s (stuckinabook) semi-annual …
Julia Rank on Lady Eleanor Smith’s Red Wagon (1930)
This is a guest post by theatre critic and researcher Julia Rank. In this article, the term ‘gypsy’ is only used when quoting directly from Lady Eleanor Smith’s work. ‘I was born dead’ is the …
Jonathan Walker on Charles Williams’ Supernatural Thrillers
This is a guest post by Jonathan Walker, whose latest novel, The Angels of L19, is published this month by Weatherglass Books . Charles Williams was a friend of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and, …
Stella Gibbons, Early and Late
This is a guest post by Phyllis Orrick. Stella Gibbons’s first novel Cold Comfort Farm still resonates, if vaguely, in the popular mind. “Wasn’t there a movie?” Or, “didn’t I see that on TV?” In …
Rob Palk on Why It’s Wrong to Neglect Clarissa
This is a guest post by novelist Rob Palk. If Clarissa is a neglected read, it might have brought some of that neglect upon itself. It’s 1500 pages long for a start and over the …
Lissa Evans Recommends Emlyn Williams’ Autobiography George
This is a guest post by the novelist Lissa Evans I’d never heard of Emlyn Williams before my sister gave me the paperback of his autobiography when I was about thirteen. The cover showed a …
Ann Kennedy Smith recommends Two Books about Women at Cambridge
This is a guest post by the literary critic Dr. Ann Kennedy Smith. It’s not hard to think of fiction set in Cambridge, from E.M. Forster’s Maurice (written in 1913-14, published posthumously in 1971) to …
Ian McMillan Recommends Five Books by Neglected Poets
This is a guest post by Ian McMillan Let’s face it, most poets are neglected (or they think they are) and, oddly, even when poets published by small independent presses are out of print, they’re …
Caryl Brahms and S. J. Simon, Lunatics of Genius
This is a guest post by David Quantick And so they sat and talked and drank and even sang a little. And the Puppa came beaming up with fresh supplies, and the Mumma sat at …
The Flutter of an Eyelid, by Myron Brinig (1933)
This is a guest post by Barry Alfonso “God has always smiled on Southern California,” wrote Carey McWilliams in 1946. An abundance of blessings filled the landscape from the shoreline to the mountains – there …
S-s-s-sh, by Kathleen Mary Carmel (1948)
This is a guest post by the writer David Quantick. “You didn’t have time to think about the dangers of a raid in the cipher room of the secret service sabotage organisation. You were too …
Tony Baer recommends The Girl, by Meridel Le Sueur (1978)
Tony Baer wrote to share his enthusiasm about Meridel Le Sueuer’s novel The Girl: Small town Minnesota farm girl moves to the big city of Minneapolis/St. Paul in the depths of the 1930’s Depression. The …
Candidates for the #1956Club
For about five years now, Karen Langley (Kaggsy of Kaggsy’s Bookish Rambles) and Simon Thomas (of Stuck in a Book) have instigated a semi-annual event in which people around the world take a week to …
Richard Kostelanetz Recommends 13 Neglected Classics of Experimental Fiction
Among the eye-opening/mind-opening experiences of my undergraduate days was discovering the marvelous world of experimental fiction. As with many other adolescent American males, Kurt Vonnegut was my gateway to this genre-bending genre, Donald Barthelme my …
Recommendations from Peter Nelson-King
Peter Nelson-King wrote recently to pass along “a few interesting rarities”: I was quite struck by Crown of Flowers and Sweet Bobby, the only two novels by the economist Joel Kurtzman. Written in the late …
Reader Recommendation: Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, by Isabel Scott Rorick (1940)
Peter Laurence writes to recommend Isabel Scott Rorick’s Mr. and Mrs. Cugat (1940), a collection of comic sketches about Mr. and Mrs. George Cugat, a happily if comically married couple that was a huge best-seller …
Signed With Their Honour, by James Aldridge (1942)
James Aldridge (1918- 2015) was an Australian journalist and war correspondent who covered the Second World War in Greece, Crete and North Africa 1940-1941. Signed With Their Honour was his first novel. Aldridge enjoyed a …