Revived Writers
Fairly often a well-deserving writer is rediscovered by readers, publishers, or reviewers/critics. The neglected books are brought back into print, retrospective appreciations are written (Dawn Powell) or a sudden rush of affection overwhelms the writer late in life (Barbara Pym). Sometimes the writer’s works are whacked with the magic wand of Hollywood, and the writer becomes much more famous and widely read than in his or her mortality (Philip K. Dick).
Recently I was struck by the handsome editions that a British publisher, Hodder Books, brought out for Pamela Hansford Johnson’s novels. Johnson (1912-1981, CBE, FRSL) was a prolific and multi-talented writer who was the guest of many universities in the US and celebrated in her day. Her second husband, C.P. Snow, had an even higher profile as a writer bridging the sciences and the humanities and wrote successfully and abundantly, including an epic 11-volume series, Strangers and Brothers. Johnson is now back in print. Snow is out of print entirely in the US. Publishers — and booksellers — are mysterious in their giving and taking away. It pays to stay alert to what is revived.
On this page, beginning in the pandemic days of Spring 2020, we will hunt around for revived fiction and its writers. We begin with Johnson. I look forward to listing other authors I carry: Nancy Mitford, Georgette Heyer, Eugenia Price, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and others. (Why are all the names I am thinking of women writers? No idea.)
Enjoy! Experiment! And come back to check on new listings.
A Harold Bell Wright Trilogy: The Shepherd of the Hills, The Calling of Dan Matthews, and God and the Groceryman
A Harold Bell Wright Trilogy: The Shepherd of the Hills, The Calling of Dan Matthews, and God and the Groceryman
“An amazingly interesting and absorbing story of people you know, the people who live round the corner or up and down your street, and behind it all a message filled with hope and inspiration.”
—The New York Times Book Review, 1927
A best-selling writer of fiction, non-fiction, and essays during the first half of the twentieth century, Harold Bell Wright was a self-taught man who founded permanent churches in Missouri, California, and Kansas. He taught his religious principles through his many novels, which address moral and social problems.
This trilogy gathers together for the first time Wright’s three novels featuring the character Dan Matthews, based on Wright himself. The Shepherd of the Hills, originally published in 1907, is Harold Bell Wright’s most famous work. The shepherd, an elderly, mysterious, learned man, escapes the buzzing restlessness of the city to live in the Ozarks. In the sequel The Calling of Dan Matthews, Dan Matthews becomes the new minister of the Midwestern town of Corinth. He battles his conscience about whether to be the spiritual puppet of the church elders or to prescribe a dose of heavy ministry to his ailing congregation. In the third novel, God and the Groceryman, Wright makes a plea for God’s presence in all aspects of life and offers a criticism of churches run as morally bankrupt businesses. This novel is a call for the modern church to return to spirituality.