Speculation, Fact and Fiction

Excellent article in The Independent by Andrew Franklin of Profile Books.

Here's the punchline, so to speak,

Finally, let's get personal and specific. David Lassman, über-Austenite, has sought publicity with the news that a number of publishers have rejected his plagiarised Austen novels. His game is one played on unsuspecting publishers every two or three years and it always brings a wry smile to some faces. Last time it was Fay Weldon, and who knows who will be next? But it proves nothing. Jane Austen is, without question, canonical, but she is not contemporary. She is not the new voice that publishers are looking for. Why would editors now look for a writer describing riding down streets on horses, wearing petticoats, or ordering broughams to call on neighbours, visiting card in hand?

John Murray became a rich man publishing Persuasion in 1818, but his firm would have found that Salman Rushdie, Irvine Welsh or Don Delillo were "not quite right for the list". In publishing, time and context are all. And Jane Austen belongs at the heart of any list of classics, where all her books sell in numerous editions by the hundreds of thousands every year. But a new novel? An Orange Prize winner? As she would not have said: yeah, right, lol.

The rest of it is well worth reading too.