Taylor Bradford told to remove ‘Blackie’ from her new book cover
Novelist’s long-awaited prequel to A Woman of Substance retitled to avoid being ‘misconstrued’
WHEN Barbara Taylor Bradford announced she was writing a prequel to A Woman of Substance, she promised her legions of fans she would finally tell them the back story of one of her leading men.
And so she will – with one rather large modification. The title and cover of her new book have been scrapped, she has disclosed, after publishers raised concerns over the character’s name: Blackie.
The book, which was announced in a marketing drive in November, was originally going to be called Blackie and Emma, named for the protagonist of A Woman of Substance and her best friend.
Blackie will now be known by his official Christian name, Shane, for the purposes of the cover, after some people feared the nicknamed would be misinterpreted.
In an interview broadcast yesterday, Bradford, 86, said: “It can no longer be called Blackie and Emma, unfortunately.
“They’ve done the cover, which was great, and my editor called me last week and said we have to have a new title.”
She said it had been feared people who were not fans of A Woman of Substance, which has sold 30 million copies worldwide since its publication in 1979, would not understand that the title referred to a name, adding: “Therefore are we talking about a black man?”
She told the Mediamasters podcast: “It’s politically incorrect, so you have to come up with a new title.”
Taylor Bradford, who wrote the prequel after realising she had never told much of the character’s back story, said she had suggested calling it Top of the World, after a geographic location in the book, but was told that was also unclear.
“No, it didn’t work,” she said. “It’s now become Shane O’neill and Emma Harte – and we’ll see if they accept it.
“You’ve got to have a name in there and I can’t have Blackie. But within four pages, the reader knows its Blackie.” The character, who in an Emmynominated television series was played by Liam Neeson, is introduced in the original book of the Emma Harte Saga novels as “an exceptionally handsome young” Irishman, with thick hair “as black as ebony” and eyes which “resembled great chunks of glittering coal”.
He introduces himself to Emma as: “Shane O’neill’s the name, but the whole world calls me Blackie.”
The book will be published by Harpercollins this year, more than 40 years after the original.
The publisher said it would open with a “13-year-old Blackie O’neill facing an uncertain future in rural County Kerry”, orphaned, alone, and preparing to seek a better life in Yorkshire.
“There, he learns his trade as a navvy, amid the grand buildings and engineering triumphs of one of England’s most prosperous cities, and starts to dream of greater things,” the synopsis continues. “And then, high on the Yorkshire moors, in the mists of a winter morning he meets a kitchen maid called Emma Harte.”
Quoted in the press release for the book in November, Bradford said: “After my beloved husband, Bob Bradford, died in the summer, Blackie O’neill came back into my head.
“Bob was by my side at the beginning when I wrote A Woman of Substance and I felt compelled to tell Blackie’s story. The true Blackie O’neill will be revealed and fans of Emma Harte will be able to live his tumultuous life with him.”