POPULAR FICTION and PUBLISHING 1960S-1990S
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POPULAR FICTION AND PUBLISHING 1960s-1990s by MOIRA C. ROBINSON A thesis submitted to The University of Birmingham for the degree of M. LITT. Department of English The University of Birmingham September 2001 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT The popular fiction publishing trade is thriving at the end of the twentieth century and so is its ability to create bestsellers, but the average author remains poor. In seven chapters this thesis will outline the processes and agencies that have driven the trade forward and established the conditions for the creation of bestsellers. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the changes in the book trade between 1960 and 2000. Chapter 2 looks at the rise of literary agents, the huge increase in their numbers, and how they have transformed the modem publishing world. Chapter 3 is a survey of the literary prize and awards scene. The follovdng four chapters look in detail at four very different bestsellers: the unexpurgated Lady Chatterley's Lover by D H Lawrence (1960), The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough (1977), The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie (1988), and The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans (1995), to assess how they have contributed to the revisions in the publishing trade. In the conclusion I evaluate these changes in the trade and conclude that while the industry's flair for creating bestsellers will continue, very few authors will benefit. For Gabby Perez PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS When, in 1994,1 began formulating a popular fiction research proposal I asked a young female assistant in Blackwell's Oxford bookshop if she had any books on popular modem fiction. She indicated a stack of copies of a new book on the English novel edited by Malcolm Bradbury and I said; No, not that one - something about the sort of fiction people actually read.' 'Oh', she said, 'you mean trash', thus dismissing, in one peijorative word, my reading matter of the last forty-odd years, along with 90 per cent of the country's. But her summarily dismissive answer to my rather inarticulate question, although not unexpected fi"om an academically orientated bookshop, made me think about what I really meant by the phrase 'popular fiction*. Having read Joseph McAleefs Popular Reading and Publishing in Britain 1914-1950, published in 1992, my original intention had been, with his permission, to follow up his work, hence my title dates. To do this I intended to look at the bestseller lists as an indication of what people were reading over my forty year time scale. However this soon became impractical and after looking at what was already published in the popular fiction field the present format gradually evolved. The length of my bibliography appears to indicate that there is a wealth of academic writing on the subject of popular fiction but on investigation it soon becomes apparent that many of the text books specialise in one or other genre and some, though carefully scrutinised have nothing relevant to say about my interpretation of the subject. For example, all I salvaged from Thomas J Roberts An Aesthetics o f Junk Fiction was a quote he uses from Betty Rosenberg's 1982 Genreflecting: A Guide to Reading Interests in Genre Fiction'. 'This book is the fruit of a blissfully squandered reading life'. This I felt was an apt quote to relate to this thesis, especially in relation to the 'trash' comment. Other texts have been much more helpful and I have used them extensively but the main source of the information used has come from newspapers and specialist journals because the speed with which the popular fiction and publishing world is changing means that often by the time items of interest have been printed they are already out of date. This is particularly relevant in the 1990s when, for example, a claim is made for the biggest publisher’s advance or the highest sales total one day is eclipsed by something bigger or better the next. Thus, many of the figures or examples I have used will prove to be invalid by the time this text is published. My initial interest in popular fiction research had been provoked by a young man saying that he had never read a book since he had been forced to do so at school. I found this proudly announced assertion difficult to believe but it had led me to look at the correlation between television serials and book sales to see whether a well publicized male-orientated television serial would encourage people, such as the previously mentioned young man, to read the related book. The television programme/book I chose was Lynda La Plante's Civvies', a story about ex-Falkland War soldiers published in 1992. She was, and still is, a popular fiction author who had had one of her books {Bella Mafia, 1991) listed in Alex Hamilton's Guardian Fastsellers list, so I assumed that this particular book would do as well. It did not. The sales figures were abysmal, in spite of respectable viewing figures for a BBC serial vying for viewers against strong competition from the other channels. As so many bestselling authors are having their books filmed or televised I originally decided to expand on my earlier research and set off on 'an autograph hunt' to interview as many of these authors who would tolerate the intrasion. To them (David Lodge, Colin Dexter and Felix Francis, on behalf of his father Dick, in particular) I owe a debt of gratitude because they were very free with their time, although it is not directly reflected in the finished thesis because the course of my research changed. It was pointed out to me, initially by David Lodge and later by the W H Smith Archivist Tim Baker-Jones, that if I were going to work with bestseller lists I needed lists that covered the entire forty years but the bestseller lists published in the broadsheet newspapers and specialist book journals such as The Bookseller only began to appear in 1974, or I should change my title dates. Not to be put off I approached W H Smith to see if they had any pre-1974 lists but following the Company's move from London to Swindon in 1985 there was a massive clearout of old records and data. Currently all their sales data is stored electronically on a rolling twenty- four month basis and then deleted. Other well known literary names gave me advice and encouragement but any cynicism found in this text can be attributed to one person in particular, Martin Seymour-Smith, who was kind enough to warn me not to take the term 'bestseller' too literally because, he said, they were 'often faked by various means'. He handwrote a few lines at the bottom of his letter which he said I could quote; Tor many readers, the information "he/she is popular" sends them to libraries or shops. One writer of no merit whatsoever created a market for himself by sending in paid assistants to shops and libraries!'(17 February 1995) Sadly it is too late to ask him to whom he referred. Others that I would particularly like to thank are: Professor Tony Davies of Birmingham University for his advice and kindness and particularly his perserverance in seeing me through this thesis; my sister, Adelaide Tunstill, and the rest of my family for their dedication in collecting newspaper and magazine articles related to this thesis. Many others have helped by writing letters, answering telephone enquiries, posting, emailing and faxing information, and they are: Will Atkinson, Faber and Faber; Laura Barber, Penguin Classics; Liz Barham, Public Relations Officer, Sainsbury's; Carole Baron, Bantam Doubleday Dell; Carmel Bedford, Article 19; Sir Dirk Bogarde, author; staff at Book Marketing Limited; Mike Bott, Archivist, Reading University Library; Clive Bradley, ex- Director General of the Publishers Association; Jenny Brown, Scottish Arts Council; David Caute, author; Rosemary Chay, University of Queensland Press; Alan Clark, author; Megan Clarke, Warner Roadshow Studios; Claire Colvin, Literary Editor, Simday Express', T Cookson, who wrote on behalf of his wife, Catherine Cookson; Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd staff; Pam Crisp, personal secretary to Colleen McCullough; Helen Daniel, Editor, Australian Book Review; Jonathan Davidson, The Reading Partnership; John Davies, Education Director, Publishers Association; Joy Eldridge, Archive Assistant, The Mass Observation Index, University of Sussex; Nicholas Evans, author; Mark Le Fanu, The Society of Authors; Martyn Goff, founder of the Booker Prize; Alex Hamilton, The Guardian-, Peter Harland, Bookwatch; Nat High, who found articles in film magazines; Richard Hoggart, author; Cathy Houston, Deputy Librarian, John Fairfax Publications; Jo Humphreys-Davies, Waterstone's, for permission to use the Waterstone's Books of the Century list; Gary Ink, Cahners Publishing Company, who gave me permission to use the Publishers Weekly All-Time First Fiction Bestsellers list; Diana James, Readers Digest, Roy Jones, Gardners Books; Anna Kafetz, J Whitaker and Sons Ltd, who gave me permission to quote from their publications; Caradoc King, literary agent; staff at KPMG;