Mrs. Alexander (Annie Hector)Margaret Oliphant
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Monday, 26 September 2022 20:17 (one year ago) link
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.
― dow, Monday, 26 September 2022 21:01 (one year ago) link
Mervyn Peake
― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, 26 September 2022 21:07 (one year ago) link
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.
― devvvine, Monday, 26 September 2022 21:11 (one year ago) link
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?
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 26 September 2022 21:11 (one year ago) link
has anyone not writing a disraeli biography read a beaconsfield novel?
― devvvine, Monday, 26 September 2022 21:13 (one year ago) link
Mervyn Peake― the floor is guava (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, September 26, 2022 10:07 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
― 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.
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 26 September 2022 21:28 (one year ago) link
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.
― dow, Monday, 26 September 2022 21:53 (one year ago) link
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?
― rob, Monday, 26 September 2022 21:55 (one year ago) link
Booth Tarkington is a GREAT one. Probably looking at old Pulitzer winners is a good way of finding likely candidates.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 26 September 2022 22:00 (one year ago) link
Sir Walter Scott was once the towering novelist in English, roughly equal in stature with Dickens.
Probably greater in stature actually.
― Narada Michael Fagan (Tom D.), Monday, 26 September 2022 22:02 (one year ago) link
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?"
― link.exposing.politically (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, 26 September 2022 22:11 (one year ago) link
Wanna read BT's The Magnificent Ambersons. (Just now finally got irony of family name btw.)
― dow, Monday, 26 September 2022 22:14 (one year ago) link
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.
― dow, Monday, 26 September 2022 22:35 (one year ago) link
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.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Monday, 26 September 2022 22:56 (one year ago) link
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), Monday, 26 September 2022 23:19 (one year ago) link
― 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?
― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 00:40 (one year ago) link
J.F. Powers?
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 00:53 (one year ago) link
Thought Powers got revived by NYRB.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 00:55 (one year ago) link
I bet Executioner books are still read by gun show types
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:01 (one year ago) link
99% sure my dad still reads clive cussler
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:14 (one year ago) link
I'll see your James Michener and raise you Herman Fucking Wouk
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:15 (one year ago) link
"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]"
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:16 (one year ago) link
Feel like the most canonical answers so far areArnold BennettGeorge MeredithJames Branch CabellI 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.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:19 (one year ago) link
Meredith mentioned here:
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:25 (one year ago) link
Bonfires In The Sky: What Are You Reading, Winter 2021-22?
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:26 (one year ago) link
Doesn’t work on zing though
Bernard DeVotoA.B. Guthrie Jr.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:31 (one year ago) link
^these two were on the reading list of The Other (Honors?) English Class one summer in high school so I checked them out at the time but don’t think I have heard much mention of them since.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:33 (one year ago) link
I read a George Meredith book last week!
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:47 (one year ago) link
Which?
btw, James, I didn't know this thread was for obscurities we hadn't read.
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:48 (one year ago) link
It was Beauchamp’s Career. I liked it.
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:51 (one year ago) link
those sound like worthy lost authors, but I haven't heard of any of them
I've been thinking about more pedestrian works
Years ago I loved Len Deighton's espionage trilogies - Berlin Game, Mexico Set and London Match, and also Spy Hook, Spy Line, Spy Sinker and Faith, Hope, Charity. Looking him up today I'm surprised to read that he is still alive
― Dan S, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:51 (one year ago) link
I just looked to see when the Mack Bolan the Executioner series ended. 2020!
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:53 (one year ago) link
Yeah, a lot of popular spy novelists from the 50s/60s not named Ian Fleming or John Le Carre are pretty obscure these days.
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 01:59 (one year ago) link
Oliver Optic
― SincereLee 'Scratch' Perry (President Keyes), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:05 (one year ago) link
ok I guess, not sure what you're mad about
― Dan S, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:06 (one year ago) link
Leon Uris maybe too obvious but also maybe I missed the Uris revival. James Clavell already noted. I kind of think those types of novelists who wrote those astronomically long works which inevitably were turned into eight hour mini series are perfect for this thread. John Jakes!
― omar little, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:15 (one year ago) link
Which? btw, James, I didn't know this thread was for obscurities we hadn't read.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:17 (one year ago) link
Although now that I look, some of the names mentioned (even by me) are still in print. But still in print is one thing. Being in print plus the cachet of a new edition with foreword by Michael Moorcock like a recent edition of Titus Alone I just got is another thing.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:29 (one year ago) link
But the cover says the intro is by another guy, David Louis Edelman.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:30 (one year ago) link
Booth Tarkington is a GREAT one. Probably looking at old Pulitzer winners is a good way of finding likely candidates.― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, September 26, 2022 5:00 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, September 26, 2022 5:00 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
There was a good New Yorker article a couple of years ago about Tarkington's changing reputation. Here's how it begins:
A trick question: Can you name the only three writers who have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction twice? Faulkner, yes; Updike. And? Hats off if you came up with Booth Tarkington. And yet his two prize-winners—“The Magnificent Ambersons” and “Alice Adams,” just reissued in one volume by the Library of America—are not even the most commercially successful novels of his extraordinarily successful career. Nine of his books were ranked among the top ten sellers of their year (up there, pre-Stephen King, with Zane Grey and Mary Roberts Rinehart), and the outlandishly dissimilar “The Turmoil” and “Seventeen” were the No. 1 sellers in consecutive years. And then there’s “Penrod,” probably the most beloved boys’ book since Tom and Huck, though I can’t recommend a stroll down that particular memory lane.There are thirty or so novels, countless short stories and serials, a string of hit plays. And there were countless honors: Tarkington was not only commercial but literary—not just the Pulitzers but in 1933 the gold medal for fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which Edith Wharton and William Dean Howells had won previously. As early as 1922, the Times had placed him twelfth (and the only writer) on a list of the twelve greatest contemporary American men. “Yes, I got in as last on the Times list,” Tarkington commented. “What darn silliness! You can demonstrate who are the 10 fattest people in a country and who are the 27 tallest . . . but you can’t say who are the 10 greatest with any more authority than you can say who are the 13 damndest fools.”As for booksellers, in 1921 they voted him the most significant contemporary American writer. (Wharton came in second. Robert Frost? Thirteenth. Theodore Dreiser? Fourteenth. Eugene O’Neill? Twenty-sixth.) Nothing ever changes. Some forty years earlier, a comparable poll ranked E. P. Roe and Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth at Nos. 1 and 2, with scores of votes each. At the bottom of the list—with two votes—came Herman Melville.How to explain this remarkable career—the meteoric ascent to fame, the impregnable reputation over several decades, and then the pronounced plunge into obscurity? If you read all his fiction (which I strongly advise not attempting), you find a steady if uninspired hand at the helm. Slowly, painstakingly, Tarkington had taught himself to write reliable prose and construct appealing fictions; he was unpretentious—always literate but never showy. You could count on him to catch your interest even if he failed to grip your imagination or your heart. And he was always a gentleman.
There are thirty or so novels, countless short stories and serials, a string of hit plays. And there were countless honors: Tarkington was not only commercial but literary—not just the Pulitzers but in 1933 the gold medal for fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which Edith Wharton and William Dean Howells had won previously. As early as 1922, the Times had placed him twelfth (and the only writer) on a list of the twelve greatest contemporary American men. “Yes, I got in as last on the Times list,” Tarkington commented. “What darn silliness! You can demonstrate who are the 10 fattest people in a country and who are the 27 tallest . . . but you can’t say who are the 10 greatest with any more authority than you can say who are the 13 damndest fools.”
As for booksellers, in 1921 they voted him the most significant contemporary American writer. (Wharton came in second. Robert Frost? Thirteenth. Theodore Dreiser? Fourteenth. Eugene O’Neill? Twenty-sixth.) Nothing ever changes. Some forty years earlier, a comparable poll ranked E. P. Roe and Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth at Nos. 1 and 2, with scores of votes each. At the bottom of the list—with two votes—came Herman Melville.
How to explain this remarkable career—the meteoric ascent to fame, the impregnable reputation over several decades, and then the pronounced plunge into obscurity? If you read all his fiction (which I strongly advise not attempting), you find a steady if uninspired hand at the helm. Slowly, painstakingly, Tarkington had taught himself to write reliable prose and construct appealing fictions; he was unpretentious—always literate but never showy. You could count on him to catch your interest even if he failed to grip your imagination or your heart. And he was always a gentleman.
The article finds that Tarkington turned into a hack as he got older and concludes that "ultimately what stands between him and any large achievement is his deeply rooted, unappeasable need to look longingly backward, an impulse that goes beyond nostalgia."
― jaymc, Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:38 (one year ago) link
Good find! As a kid I forced myself through some giant new volume of Penrod since the elementary school librarian said it was only for True Readers or something like that. The only thing I can remember about it was some gag about all the kids bumping into each other and saying "Pardon my bum."
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:56 (one year ago) link
Not to pick on Alfred but those NYRB J.F. Powers volumes have intros by the likes of Elizabeth Hardwick and Denis Donoghue.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 02:59 (one year ago) link
David ElyWIlliam KotzwinkleRichard Brautigan
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:01 (one year ago) link
Now wondering how the LoA edition of Tarkington fits in with my reissue rule, does it not really count because they kind of do it because of historical importance? Maybe my rule is BS? Don't really want to discourage people from submitting as many authors as possible that sort of fit, or disqualifying any author since somebody read them last week. Really thread should be interpreted as something like Out of Print or Out of Fashion.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:07 (one year ago) link
Hmm. Kotzwinkle still going strong.
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:13 (one year ago) link
it's kind of true about brautigan, which is a fucking shame. he's one of my favorites and a big influence on my own writing style. he really got pigeonholed unfairly as a "hippie writer" i think.
― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:18 (one year ago) link
do people still read william gaddis?
― Kate (rushomancy), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:20 (one year ago) link
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v22/n24/august-kleinzahler/no-light-on-in-the-house
― Ride On Proserpina (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 September 2022 03:23 (one year ago) link
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.
― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Friday, 23 February 2024 18:53 (one month ago) link
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
― wang mang band (Noodle Vague), Friday, 23 February 2024 19:03 (one month ago) link
that's Sir Hall Caine to you. I've heard of none of these.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/591
― koogs, Friday, 23 February 2024 19:19 (one month ago) link
Hitchcock adapted one of his novels!
― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Friday, 23 February 2024 19:22 (one month ago) link
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.
― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Friday, 23 February 2024 19:28 (one month ago) link
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
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Friday, 23 February 2024 20:52 (one month ago) link
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]
― dow, Saturday, 24 February 2024 01:08 (one month ago) link
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.
― scott seward, Saturday, 24 February 2024 04:32 (one month ago) link
The Country of the Pointed Firs remained very much a thing when I finished grad school in 2010.
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, 24 February 2024 13:25 (one month ago) link
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.
― no lime tangier, Saturday, 24 February 2024 18:05 (one month ago) link
are there richard aldington readers out there? another writer of that era whose novels i never see around.
― no lime tangier, Saturday, 24 February 2024 18:09 (one month ago) link
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?
― Fizzles, Monday, 18 March 2024 11:15 (one week ago) link
wait, i’m getting him confused with… who am i getting him confused with?
― Fizzles, Monday, 18 March 2024 11:16 (one week ago) link
henry williamson.
― Fizzles, Monday, 18 March 2024 11:18 (one week ago) link
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.
― Fizzles, Monday, 18 March 2024 11:20 (one week ago) link
Edward Dahlberg
― Don’t Want to Say Goodbye Jumbo (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 18 March 2024 13:18 (one week ago) link
No one except skot that is
― Don’t Want to Say Goodbye Jumbo (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 18 March 2024 13:19 (one week ago) link
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"!
― Ward Fowler, Monday, 18 March 2024 13:36 (one week ago) link
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
― no lime tangier, Monday, 18 March 2024 14:05 (one week ago) link
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
― cozen itt (wins), Monday, 18 March 2024 14:13 (one week ago) link
I myself have been meaning to read Dahlberg for a long while/pvmic
― Don’t Want to Say Goodbye Jumbo (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, 18 March 2024 16:30 (one week ago) link
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.
― o. nate, Monday, 18 March 2024 18:35 (one week ago) link
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
― President Keyes, Monday, 18 March 2024 18:37 (one week ago) link
i keep my dahlberg books handy for comfort reading. he always brings a smile to my face.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 19 March 2024 03:29 (one week ago) link
Just came across a cheap ebook of mentioned upthread and championed by Conrad Knickerbocker author Charles Wright’s novels that looks intriguing
― Make Me Smile (Come Around and See Me) (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 24 March 2024 19:51 (four days ago) link
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!
― dow, Monday, 25 March 2024 03:31 (three days ago) link