Black Beauty sold millions, the author got just £20
JR.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord Of The Rings, and C.S. Lewis, creator of Narnia, once attended a New Year’s eve party dressed as polar bears. It wasn’t even a fancy dress party.
Gilbert White, the 18th-century author of The Natural history Of Selborne, was the first person known to use an ‘x’ to represent a kiss. he did so in a letter of 1763. Sir arthur Conan Doyle, begetter of Sherlock holmes, was a very fine cricketer. he once clean bowled the legendary W.G. Grace.
Oliver Tearle’s book of literary trivia is full of such inconsequential but delightful facts. Starting at John O’Groats and meandering his way down the country to Lands’ end, he unearths a variety of intriguing stories. In Scotland, we hear of the 19th-century poet a.h. Clough, who was looking for a Gaelic-sounding title for a long narrative poem he had written. he consulted some locals. They suggested he call it The Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich. Unfortunately, he did.
When it was published, one reviewer pointed out that Toper-na-Fuosich was not a place name. It was part of ‘an ancient highland toast to the female genital organs’. The highlanders had been pulling Clough’s leg. The poet was mortified and the title of his poem had to be changed in future editions. If Tearle’s compilation has any recurring theme, it’s the fleeting nature of literary fame.
Who today reads Marie Corelli? Yet she was the most popular novelist of her day. her books sold in their millions. She lived in Stratford, where she was the town’s second most important literary attraction. Tourists gathered to watch her on the avon, in her gondola. She had shipped one over from Venice in the early 1900s, complete with handsome gondolier.
Many writers praised in their lifetimes are no longer read. Some were attacked but are now hailed as geniuses. emily Bronte’s Wuthering heights received scathing reviews on first publication. ‘We rise from the perusal of Wuthering heights as if we had come fresh from a pest-house’, one critic remarked. even emily’s father, who outlived all six of his children, never managed to read her book.
Reviewers fail to recognise future successes with dismal regularity. Most of
them dismissed Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap when it premiered in Nottingham in 1952.
The Guardian called it a ‘ middling piece’ but it went on to become the 20th century’s longest running play. In fact, it’s still showing at St. Martin’s Theatre, London. Christie bequeathed the rights to the play to her grandson on his birthday. Not a bad present for a nine-year- old boy.
Writers themselves don’t always get the rewards they deserve. As a teenager, Anna Sewell, the author of Black Beauty, fell on her way home from school in the rain. She never walked properly again. She died in Norfolk the year after her famous children’s book was published. It has since sold over 50 million copies. She was paid £20 for it.
By its nature, Britain By The Book is anecdotal and full of digressions. Although Tearle is a lecturer in English literature, he’s not writing academic criticism. But any book that draws attention to Amanda McKittrick Ros, born in County Down, has to be worth a look.
She has some claim to being Britain’s worst ever writer. Tolkien and his associates in the Inklings, an Oxford club, had competitions in which they tried to read out passages from her novels without laughing. They always failed.
Her poetry was equally bad. The opening lines of one poem about Westminster Abbey are: ‘ Holy Moses! Take a look!/Flesh decayed in every nook!’ And, no, she wasn’t intending to be funny. Like Corelli, she’s been forgotten, but she deserves her place in this entertaining literary travelogue.