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Disappearing Authors: a fascinating article from 1900
Link to article here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25104969?seq=10
I absolutely love this article, and often return to it for suggestions of authors to read. As I get older, I seem to read fewer and fewer post-1900 works: I try not to dwell on this reactionary tendency, although I was rather embarrassed to learn that I share some of the literary tastes of John Major.
I love it because it is fascinating to see which writers that the writer thought would disappear have remained in print and in our consciousness (i.e. Trollope and Scott), the writers who he was probably right about (Lever and Reade), and how the writers of 1900 have fared who he clearly thinks are low-quality.
It also brings home how there is a fair amount of luck involved in terms of who survives, who is elevated to the literary canon, etc. Obviously a lot of merit is involved, but it would be interesting to make similar predictions about our own era. Will people be reading Ishiguro, Tartt, Atwood, Rushdie etc in 100 years? Is, say, Anthony Burgess already on his way out? Who will endure and who will disappear and fall out of print?
#entertainment
Link to article here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25104969?seq=10
I absolutely love this article, and often return to it for suggestions of authors to read. As I get older, I seem to read fewer and fewer post-1900 works: I try not to dwell on this reactionary tendency, although I was rather embarrassed to learn that I share some of the literary tastes of John Major.
I love it because it is fascinating to see which writers that the writer thought would disappear have remained in print and in our consciousness (i.e. Trollope and Scott), the writers who he was probably right about (Lever and Reade), and how the writers of 1900 have fared who he clearly thinks are low-quality.
It also brings home how there is a fair amount of luck involved in terms of who survives, who is elevated to the literary canon, etc. Obviously a lot of merit is involved, but it would be interesting to make similar predictions about our own era. Will people be reading Ishiguro, Tartt, Atwood, Rushdie etc in 100 years? Is, say, Anthony Burgess already on his way out? Who will endure and who will disappear and fall out of print?
#entertainment
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