This excellent cradle-to-grave biography of a much loved novelist who goes in and out of fashion captures her alarming habits and tormented love affairsIn 1971 the author Barbara Pym was at her day job at the International African Institute when she noticed “Mr C” laboriously attacking his lunchtime sandwich with a knife and fork. Pym made a mental note of the detail before asking herself ruefully, “Oh why can’t I write about things like that any more – why is this kind of thing no longer acceptable?” Ten years earlier, Jonathan Cape had dumped her after her sixth book on the grounds that her brand of anthropological observation of English social manners was old lady-ish, dull and didn’t sell. As an extra humiliation, no other publishing house had been interested in picking up Miss Pym: books built on “the daily round of trivial things” could hardly compete with Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal or, if you were feeling fancy, Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Jonathan Cape had even published John Lennon (Pym liked the Beatles, but still). Clearly there was no place in contemporary literature for Mr C and his oddly formal way with a sandwich.There is nothing unusual about major minor novelists having a disappointing and disproportionate decline, followed by a posthumous flowering in reputation and sales. What’s unusual about Pym is that her phoenix moment came while she was still alive. In 1977 the Times Literary Supplement asked well-known... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2021-04-08 06:30:07 UTC ]
Titles from Orchard Books and Jonathan Cape have won this year's Roald Dahl Funny Prizes,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-11-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Frederick Forsyth has been awarded the Crime Writers Association's Diamond Dagger award at... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-07-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The late American publisher Barney Rosset led the charge to push back against literary puritanism, championing writers like Henry Miller and William S. Burroughs.Barney Rosset, who died Tuesday at the age of 89, was the most important American publisher of the 20th century. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-02-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jonathan Cape will publish the unfinished novel The Hanging Garden by Australian author Patrick... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-02-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jonathan Cape has acquired a steampunk novel by journalist Matt Suddain, describing it as being... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jonathan Cape has acquired the Observer/Cape/Graphic Short Story Prize 2011-winning work, The... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-01-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Novelist Nicholas Royle has moved to Jonathan Cape and Vintage for his seventh novel, titled,... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-12-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Booker Prize moves sales, especially for the winner. Not only does the British literary prize matter to U.K. readers, but Americans apparently care as well. After Julian Barness The Sense of an Ending was awarded the Booker last week, the authors English publisher, Jonathan Cape, announced... Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2011-10-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Charlotte Williams Publication Date: Wed, 19/10/2011 - 15:02 Random House is now reprinting 125,000 copies of Jonathan Cape's Booker-winning The Sense of An Ending, signing off a further 50,000 copies in addition to the initial 75,000 copy reprint. Vintage sales director Tom... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-10-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Written By: Benedicte Page Publication Date: Mon, 18/04/2011 - 09:20 Poetry publishers have united en masse to demand the Arts Council overturn its decision to stop funding the Poetry Book Society, saying the demise of the organisation would lead to a "considerable loss of sales". A total of... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-04-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Publication Date: Fri, 01/04/2011 - 11:14 Six titles spanning imperial Japan to 19th-century Jamaica have been shortlisted for the second Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction, worth £25,000. Andrea Levy's The Long Song (Headline Review) and Tom McCarthy's C (Jonathan Cape) both shortlisted... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2011-04-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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