The main job of a publisher is to exercise taste in choosing what to publish. No one can be expected to get it right every time, and it may well be better to err on the side of selectivity than to publish too widely. But sometimes even a legendary publishing house can get it wrong:
T.S. Eliot rejects WH Auden
T. S. Eliot to W. H. Auden, 9 September 1927:I must apologise for having kept your poems such a long time, but I am very slow to make up my mind. I do not feel that any of the enclosed is quite right, but I should be very interested to follow your work. I am afraid that I am much too busy to give you any detailed criticism that would do the poems justice, and I suggest that whenever you happen to be in London you might let me know and I should be very glad if you cared to come to see me.
Faber rejects Paddington Bear
Book report on A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond, 28 August 1957:
I think the author has missed his mark in this story of a bear adopted by a middle class family called Brown. Unless I mistake him he means it to be funny but the jokes are all on the bear; the Browns treat him very much as I imagine they would treat a ‘foreigner’ and as one’s sympathies and affections are all with the bear it is difficult to laugh with the author. Moreover the Brown family are perfect fools, they leave him, who knows nothing of modern conveniences, alone to bath and nearly to drown; they twice lose him, once on the Underground and once in a large store simply through inattention – the parents Brown that is. No – frankly the best of the book lies in its title.Read more: Literary Hub
No comments:
Post a Comment