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.
Love in a Mist
Love in a Mist
It was the last day of school term and, though nobody knew it except herself, an important day for Ruth. Tomorrow, when the holidays started, was the day when, guided by her friend, the author of The Mind and the Child, she would start her plan for freeing Paul’s ego.
Worried about her son Paul, who’s showing signs of complexes (or perhaps just being spoiled?), Ruth Tring consults a work of child psychology. When a film crew spots the boy at his school and a major director decides he should be a star, Ruth thinks it’s just what the doctor ordered. But her husband and father-in-law would be dead set against it, so Ruth consults the wise matriarch of the family and manages to get Paul his close-up. But is it really the best thing for him? And will the family survive the resulting jealousies and upheavals? In this page-turning novel, we get an inside look at the British film industry, realistic family dynamics, and a healthy dose of savvy psychology.
Love in a Mist is the last of twelve charming, page-turning romances published under the pseudonym “Susan Scarlett” by none other than beloved children’s author and novelist Noel Streatfeild. Out of print for decades, they were rediscovered by Greyladies Books in the early 2010s, and Dean Street Press and Furrowed Middlebrow are delighted now to make all twelve available to a wider audience.
Praise
“A writer who shows a rich experience in her writing and a charm” Nottingham Journal