{Writers, Publishers, Readers}[1st April 1989]

[Redbook6:117-120)][19890401:1745]{Writers, Publishers, Readers}[1st April 1989]

19890401.1745

First-time lambing – at our level of inexperience and unpreparedness, it works out at about 2½ days per lamb – followed by Easter (3 visits* in a row to cater for) followed by a frenzy of drain repairs at the end of which, today, I snapped the wooden[handle of the] spade: have kept me away from reading and writing. But before and over this period comes this little exchange:

‘Duckworth (Gerald), & Co, Ltd (1898), The Old Piano Factory, 43 Gloucester Crescent, London, NW1 7DY[.] T.01-485 3484[.] T.A. Platypus, London, NW1[.] Directors: Ray Davies, Colin Haycraft (Chairman and Managing), David Lines[.]

‘General, fiction, and academic.’

– Writers & Artists Yearbook, 1989.

‘… I shall long to hear what Duckworth says. They are (I hope not) a dying breed, the small idiosyncratic privately owned publisher. Everything seems to belong to R. Murdoch or 20th Century Fox. Blackwell[’]s, Hatchards and John Sandoe*** all sent me their Christmas catalogues and there was not one single book I wanted. Very sad.

‘… The only joy for me on the book scene is that Alice Thomas Ellis (married to owner of Duckworth), Molly Keane and Anita Brookner go on being published. They aren’t commercial or airport novels and beautifully written. Not your dish….’****

– Letter from [S E-T],# published novelist and publisher’s reader, 13/3/89.

‘We don’t publish fiction, only academic work….’ (on being questioned further:) ‘We only publish a few, well-known authors of fiction….’

– Chairman’s ? Secretary at Duckworth’s [sic], to [W], telephone conversation re ‘[2]’, 31/3/89.

Such as the Owner’s wife, I suppose.

*[ie by visitors]

**[Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation had acquired 20^th Century Fox in 1985]

***[Bookshops in Oxford (& elsewhere), Piccadilly (London), and King’s Road, Chelsea (London), respectively]

****[The writer had subsequently read Anita Brookner’s ‘A Misalliance’ according to Journal notes.]

#[See eg [Redbook2:129-132][19780829:2025]{Publication}[29^th August 1978]]

[During &/or not long after this period, journalism and short fiction by the writer was accepted for independent publication, for some of which he was even paid.... The problem was always the long naïve sibylline fictions]

[continues]

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