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.
Mrs. Tim Gets a Job
Mrs. Tim Gets a Job
Miss Clutterbuck would like me to run the bar—no, it can’t be that—run the car, which has seen its best days but is still useful for shopping. Grace has told her I am patient and tactful, so (as she herself is neither the one nor the other) she thinks I am the right person to look after the social side.
With husband Tim stationed in Egypt and her children at boarding-school, Hester Christie—affectionately known as “Mrs. Tim” and based loosely on D.E. Stevenson herself—finds herself at loose ends, until her friend Grace takes her at her word and finds her a job with the formidable Erica Clutterbuck, who has opened a new hotel in the Scottish Borders.
Once there, Hester’s initial ambivalence disappears in a swirl of problems and situations with hotel guests and old friends alike, including serving as fortune teller at the local fête and aiding and abetting romantic schemes, not to mention the reappearance of the debonair Tony Morley.
This volume, first published in 1947, is a sequel to Mrs. Tim Carries On and brings Hester into the immediate post-war years. Her exploits continue in Mrs. Tim Flies Home. All three titles are back in print for the first time in decades from Furrowed Middlebrow and Dean Street Press. This edition includes a new introduction by Alexander McCall Smith.
Praise
“D.E. Stevenson brings back Mrs. Tim after some years’ silence, and here she is the same charming, witty woman, a little older, a little wiser but just as busy as ever.” Edinburgh Evening News
“It is a delightful book, and long may Mrs Tim flourish!” Sunday Times