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.
Pirouette
Pirouette
“Dancing is not, as with some of the other arts, a matter of short inspiration and quick effects; dancing is a vocation. A girl whom I choose to star as much gives her life to dancing as a novice entering a nunnery gives her life to religion.”
So says the demanding Madame Tania as she offers a long-awaited starring role to young Judith Nell, who has strived her whole life for success in the ballet. But her big break arrives just as she’s falling for Paul, who has demands of his own. The resulting conflict, and the pressure from Judith’s mother, who tries to make up for her own stifled ambitions by obsessing over Judith’s career, form the crux of a riveting, poignant tale by an author who knows the ins and outs of ballet better than anyone. Enriching the main story are Judith’s fellow dancers—including a young girl who has sacrificed her youth only to grow too tall for a career—and her brothers. Not to mention the fearsome Madame Tania, who ends by getting told off in no uncertain terms!
Pirouette is the eleventh 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