Novelists No One Reads Anymore

Bonus points for being completely out of print. Such as:

Wilfrid Sheed.

Although some stuff of his like his Great American Songbook survey and maybe some memoirs and baseball books can still be found.

And it looks like Real James Morrison read Max Jamison in recent years.

Checked for any earlier such thread but couldn’t find one.

George Gissing

Gilbert Frankau.

Harold Frederic

xpost Extraordinarily popular at the time, and i found to my astonishment at the weekend, also wrote poetry. The only novel i attempted to read was almost unbearably boring.

Peter de Polnay

*forty novels in 45 years*

again, v popular. again, very hard to find any worth these days, though i think he was favourably mentioned by Julian McLaren-Ross somewhere.

Another Peter de...

Does anyone read Peter de Vries any more?

Edward Jenkins

There's a book on this topic, The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler. Here's an article about it, hilariously the hyperlink to the book on his publisher's website is now a 404.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20171010-the-great-writers-forgotten-by-history

J.G. Holland
William Black
J.W. DeForest
Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

I like these btw

Arnold Bennett

Another Peter de...

Does anyone read Peter de Vries any more?

George Meredith
Sinclair Lewis

Arnold Bennett

― lord of the rongs (anagram)

In a college course on the British modernists, my professor said in ref to Woolf's attacks on Bennett, "Ha, ha, actually, Arnold Bennett's a pretty good novelist!"

Ever heard of Alexander Baron or Mary Elizabeth Braddon?

I'd say Braddon is no longer "forgotten." Lady Audley's Secret has 22, 573 ratings on Goodreads, for example.

Sinclair Lewis

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, September 26, 2022 3:40 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It Can't Happen Here got a bump after the 2016 election. It along with Arrowsmith, Babbitt, and Main Street appear to be print as "The Essential Sinclair Lewis."

if i’ve read them they don’t belong in this thread, so sinclair lewis def doesn’t

Sir Walter Scott was once the towering novelist in English, roughly equal in stature with Dickens. Now, he's a dim blip on a fast receding horizon. And who reads John Galsworthy nowadays?

_Another Peter de...

Does anyone read Peter de Vries any more?_

Good one! A friend once decided to lend me his copy of _Slouching Towards Kalamazoo_ which I eventually returned years later unread except for the first page or two.

Mrs. Alexander (Annie Hector)
Margaret Oliphant

Have read some Mrs. Oliphant, as she was credited in the anthologies where I found her---don't remember other particulars, but thought she was very good.

Mervyn Peake

oliphant still has several regular readers at my library (granted it's a strange one); have seen bennett, braddon, and gissing all go out too.

Some of the long-book high modernists -- Robert Musil, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos -- feel this way to me. Still famous, I think, but read?

has anyone not writing a disraeli biography read a beaconsfield novel?

Mervyn Peake

― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, September 26, 2022 10:07 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

No way, I read Titus Groan just this year.

I still want to read Peake, also Gissing's New Grub Street, sounds v. relatable. Did read a lot of Dos Passos a few years ago, but seemed like would have been best read in high school (later confirmed by ILB founder Scott Seward). Enjoyed the Ford memoir I read, haven't gotten to the novels. Will read my copy of The Man Without Qualities when I can dig it up.

eephus' list are all authors I've thought I should read at some point or another and never did, so you might be onto something there (xp)

For some reason I read a couple of Sinclair Lewis books in high school (on my own, not for class). I was assigned Galsworthy in college, but it was his plays for a course on modern drama. A friend gave me a copy of Titus Groan not too long ago, so definitely not Peake.

Booth Tarkington, maybe?

Booth Tarkington is a GREAT one. Probably looking at old Pulitzer winners is a good way of finding likely candidates.

Sir Walter Scott was once the towering novelist in English, roughly equal in stature with Dickens.

Probably greater in stature actually.

I don't like Gissing, afraid he's often like "what if Dickens or Zola was a tory who hated poor people and thought they deserved all they got?"

Wanna read BT's The Magnificent Ambersons. (Just now finally got irony of family name btw.)

I did read Lewis's Kingsblood Royal: rising young pillar of a Minnesota community is urged by his daddy to investigate family tree, which may be like title says. Turns out key ancestor, whom they knew to be Canadian immigrant, was originally Haitian---Creole at least. Youngblood conceals findings from father, and self for a while, but eventually is told by out Black people of Minnesota race crimes, one of which (been so long, can't recall) may well be the Duluth lynching which some Minnesotans think is referenced in first verse of Duluth native's "Desolation Row." Novel, even by Nobel Prize winner, seems to be pushing envelope of late 40s, when civil rights was said by proto-McCarthyites and some others to be subject to Commie plots.

Robert Musil, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos

Musil recently had a minor revival with new translations coming out and I read Man Without Qualities several years back. I've read Ford's most famous novels, and thought his Parade's End trilogy much better than The Good Soldier. Every time I try to read anything of Dos Passos I bog down before I get to page 20.

I figure very religious novelists are less read today, like E.P. Roe who was hugely popular and is probably now just read by Christians.

I figure very religious novelists are less read today, like E.P. Roe who was hugely popular and is probably now just read by Christians.

― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes)

oooh, how about lew wallace?

first one to come to mind was james branch cabell

do people read, like, james clavell? james a. michener? how about clive cussler, author of the extremely popular "dirk pitt" series of novels? how about don pendleton, whose character mack bolan, the executioner, was the inspiration for marvel comics' "punisher", and is really the guy cops _should_ be celebrating?

J.F. Powers?

Thought Powers got revived by NYRB.

I bet Executioner books are still read by gun show types

99% sure my dad still reads clive cussler

I'll see your James Michener and raise you Herman Fucking Wouk

"Historians, novelists, publishers, and critics who gathered at the Library of Congress in 1995 to mark Wouk's 80th birthday described him as an American Tolstoy.[2]"

Feel like the most canonical answers so far are

Arnold Bennett
George Meredith
James Branch Cabell

I even seem to remember something the subject of the original post said about Meredith, have to go look for it.

Of course all the other answers are welcome as well, although some authors that have been named seem to have had recent enough revivals to be disqualified, such as Mervyn Peake, as someone has already brought up.

Meredith mentioned here:

Bonfires In The Sky: What Are You Reading, Winter 2021-22?

On the shelf in the public area of my daughter’s dorm there seems to be a copy of a Sidney Sheldon novel.

the other side of midnight!

Seems to be a brand new copy. By “the master of the unexpected.”

Another thread asserts that the film version wrecked Marie-France Pisier’s career.

Just returned to the spot. See a ton of Robert B. Parker on there.

Not that he isn't read at all anymore but Oliver Goldsmith was super popular for a long long time. The Vicar of Wakefield was getting anew edition every two or three weeks a hundred years after it was published.

Vicars used to have a much higher Q-Score and were capable of filling the leading-man role without hurting the box office.

Paul Gallico

Already mentioned though, sorry

Have read that, even as he became more of a Slavophile, Dusty was still affected by this French guy; have also read that Karl Marx was a fan:

Marie-Joseph "Eugène" Sue (French pronunciation: [øʒɛn sy]; 26 January 1804 – 3 August 1857) was a French novelist...He was strongly affected by the socialist ideas of the day, and these prompted his most famous works, the anti-Catholic novels: The Mysteries of Paris (Les Mystères de Paris) (published in Journal des débats from 19 June 1842 until 15 October 1843) and The Wandering Jew (Le Juif errant; 10 vols, 1844–1845), which were among the most popular specimens of the serial novel.[4][8] The Wandering Jew is a Gothic novel depicting the titular character in conflict with the villain, a murderous Jesuit named Rodin.[1] These works depicted the intrigues of the nobility and the harsh life of the underclass to a wide public. Les Mystères de Paris spawned a class of imitations all over the world, the city mysteries. Sue's books caused controversy because of their strongly violent scenes, and also because of their socialist and anti-clerical subtexts.[1]

someone asked me about May Sarton today and i said that nobody reads her anymore but i actually have no idea if this is true! it just felt true. this is how fake news gets started.

in my defense, i read a really nice book by Mary Ellen Chase this year. she died in 1973. in lieu of flowers read one of her books.

I recently saw a copy of the Matarese Circle by Robert Ludlum and thought of his thread. I know the Bourne films still persist but I never ever see anyone reading the books, and they don't even seem to turn up that often in UK charity shops these days (and they really were all over airport bookshops etc in the 70s/80s).

Do people in the UK still read Hal Caine? Those Manxman/Deemster books were a pretty huge deal at the end of the 19th century.

xp as far as Bourne is concerned he was obviously cash-worthy enough for the publisher to pay Ninja Pulp King Eric van Lustbader to write a bunch of further sequels at one point, tho i have no idea what the state of play is in 2024

that's Sir Hall Caine to you. I've heard of none of these.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/591

Hitchcock adapted one of his novels!

Also I thank him for this:

It was this book, (The Manxman) published as one volume in August 1894 by Heinemann, that ended the system of three-volume novels.

I'd never heard of Gertrude E. Trevelyan but she fits the thread and sounds interesting:

82 years ago today, Gertrude Eileen Trevelyan, one of the most remarkable novelists of the generation that followed Virginia Woolf, died at her parents' home in Bath of injuries sustained when her flat was bombed during the Blitz. Died—and was utterly forgotten.

A thread. pic.twitter.com/7SQkv87OXH

— Neglected Books (@neglectedbooks) February 22, 2024

xp which Mary Ellen did you read? Silas Crockett rings a bell, so maybe I've seen it--- also like this note:

She taught at Smith College starting in 1926 until her retirement in 1955. She was the lifelong companion of Eleanor Duckett, a medieval scholar whom she met at Smith, and with whom she lived in Northampton until her death. Two adjoining residence halls on the Smith campus are named for Chase and Duckett.[3][1]

i read *Dawn In Lyonesse*. its short. you could read it in a day. i liked it a lot. she had a simple style.

the best book i've read in the last year was *A Country Doctor* by Sarah Orne Jewett. i loved it. it was like 1884 alice munro kinda. don't know how many people read her anymore! i'm sure *The Country of the Pointed Firs* is still in print but i'm guessing when its taught its taught in some kind of medicinal way. for historical importance. regional writing of the late 19th century in america. i could be wrong. she's so readable and entertaining to me.

The Country of the Pointed Firs remained very much a thing when I finished grad school in 2010.

i've just got done reading a memoir/polemic by the english novelist douglas goldring. also a poet, playwright, publisher, lit mag editor, travel writer, tourist guide & journalist, he seems to have known everyone in art and leftist circles during the twenties but the only reference to him i can remember ever seeing was as the publisher of an early story by wyndham lewis. have never come across one of his novels but now keeping an eye out.

are there richard aldington readers out there? another writer of that era whose novels i never see around.

once upon a time i kept meaning to read some. plus the themes were relevant to some stuff i was taking notes on and chewing over. i remember his cycle was being kept in print - yellow spined volumes iirc - but can’t remember who by. was he a bit fash?

wait, i’m getting him confused with… who am i getting him confused with?

henry williamson.

aldington i kept bumping when i used to be in the english language modernists etc, think if anything id have him as a v minor poet, didn’t realise he’d written any novels or if i did know i’ve forgotten.

Edward Dahlberg

No one except skot that is

Burgess picks the whole of Williamson's Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight in his 99 novels selection, while admitting "In the later volumes a pro-Fascist tone prevails, highly disturbing, and an almost manic bitterness which is far from acceptable"!

his son played on some gong related projects iirc

xpost: liked the dahlberg collection i read a few years back!

& xposts: yeah aldington mostly known for his imagist association and biographies of the two lawrences. death of a hero is the only one of his novels that got/gets any attention as far as i know. was even published as a penguin which is why i'm surprised i've never spotted it.

also reading an article about goldring's lit mag turns out it was where a bunch of what would later become lewis's the wild body was first published speaking of fash

The only Williamson I’m curious to read is his unused film treatment for tarka that was 400,000 words long & basically encompassed that whole 15-novel cycle, going through centuries of history of the region before the otter even appears; weirdly the producers ended up going in a different direction. His descendants seem to work extremely hard at whitewashing his more unsavoury traits but even the official website basically intimates it was the scribblings of a demented crackpot

I myself have been meaning to read Dahlberg for a long while/pvmic

Mayne Reid, who wrote 75 adventure novels of the American West in the mid-1800s, which were quite popular, especially with young readers, and translated into many languages. He was cited as an early influence by some better-remembered writers, such as Nabokov, Chekhov, Milosz, Conan Doyle.

I just ran across this 1897 article from The Yellow Book called "A Forgotten Novelist" about an 18th century writer named Robert Bage

https://archive.org/details/yellowjan189712uoft/page/n318/mode/1up

i keep my dahlberg books handy for comfort reading. he always brings a smile to my face.

Just came across a cheap ebook of mentioned upthread and championed by Conrad Knickerbocker author Charles Wright’s novels that looks intriguing

Reminds me I have a Wright threefer somewhere: The Messenger, The Wig, and Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About, with intro by Ishmael Reed. Gotta dig that one up and get started!

Marie Corelli

The popularity of Marie Corelli has never been understood in this office, ‘“The Review of Books and Art” has done its full duty in pointing out the errors of Marie’s literary ways. Readers who still linger over her pages must do so at their own risk. The editor can no longer feel that he is in any way responsible for them. Mr. Alden’s letter from London, printed last week, probably explains the recruiting ground whence Marie’s readers are mainly drawn. He said she is read “by people who are ‘so fond of reading,’” and that, when a new book of hers comes out, the chambermaid is sure to read it. Here are the sources for a very large following, and Marie Corelli unquestionably has one. She was virtually started on her successful career by an august personage— who to have been told better—the Queen herself. Since the Queen was known to read her works, thousands of other persons, beginning with chambermaids and rising in the social scale far too high, have been drawn into the miscellaneous following.

But this is no reason why “Harry ©.” should read Marie Corelli. The Queen may do so, but he should not. It will be neither wise nor profitable for him to waste his holiday hours in that vain pursuit. The editor is glad to know that he finds “The Sorrows of Satan” “rather ridiculous,” and sees in that fact sound literary judgment. Publishers’ counters are loaded with better fictions than hers. Here below is a list (which the editor has chosen somewhat at random from the much longer list printed in “The Review” on Dec, 11) to which “Harry C.”, and all his reading friends are earnestly urged to give their days and nights, rather than to the books of Marie

--New York Times Book Review, Jan. 8, 1898

“The Review of Books and Art” has done its full duty in pointing out the errors of Marie’s literary ways.

Amazing line

i want to see how many on the much longer list no one reads anymore

Ulysses references Corelli a few times i think, which may have extended her longevity and would imply that at least in Dublin in 1904 people were ignoring the New York Times Book Review

In 2007, the British film Angel, based on a book by Elizabeth Taylor, was released as a thinly-veiled biography of Corelli. The film starred Romola Garai in the Corelli role and also starred Sam Neill and Charlotte Rampling. It was directed by François Ozon, who stated, "The character of Angel was inspired by Marie Corelli, a contemporary of Oscar Wilde and Queen Victoria's favourite writer. Corelli was one of the first writers to become a star, writing bestsellers for an adoring public. Today she has been largely forgotten, even in England."

Horror critic R. S. Hadji placed The Sorrows of Satan at number one in his list of the worst horror novels ever written.[2]

Brian Stableford, discussing Corelli's "narcissistic" novels, described The Sorrows of Satan thus: "as delusions of grandeur and expressions of devout wish-fulfilment go, the fascination of the Devil was an unsurpassable masterstroke"

On Wormwood:

The Times described it as "a succession of tedious and exaggerated soliloquies, relieved by tolerably dramatic, but repulsive incidents", and criticized Corelli's writing as having a "feminine redundancy of adjectives".[2] The Standard described the book as "repulsive".

"Corelli’s heaving blend of overheated romance, vitalist metaphysics, and occultism, with plentiful hints of clairvoyance, reincarnation, mesmerism, Egyptian mysticism, and mysterious psychic powers and traditions, had secured her position as one of the most popular and successful authors of the Edwardian period, outselling writers like H. G. Wells, J. M. Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Rudyard Kipling."

https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/radioactive-fictions/

sounds rad tbh

Margaret Mackie Morrison "achieved international acclaim in 1932 with the publication, under her pen name March Cost, of her first novel A Man Named Luke," says Wikipedia. Someone must have read her stuff.

Ulysses references Corelli a few times i think,

The Guardian Angel by Paul de Kock

Introduction

Those who have heard of Paul de Kock at all will have probably have come across the name in Ulysses; Molly Bloom asks her husband Leopold to get her one of his books, and there are several other references to him in various places in the novel. (Though Sweets of Sin, the book Bloom bought, is apparently not by him.) Even to Joyceans it may come as a surprise to realise that Paul de Kock really existed; at least one (amateur) Joyce fan assured me that he didn't. But he did; he was a well-known and popular French author of the first half of the nineteenth centry. His books were translated into several languages, and popular in Britain for many years. Collected editions in English translation were published in both England and the USA in 1902-1904.

Paul de Kock - a Brief Biography

(From the 11th Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica [1911])
KOCK, CHARLES PAUL DE (1793-1871), French novelist, was born at Passy on the 21st of May 1793. He was a posthumous child, his father, a banker of Dutch extraction, having been a victim of the Terror. Paul de Kock began life as a banker's clerk. For the most part he resided on the Boulevard St Martin, and was one of the most inveterate of Parisians.