Sunday 12 October 2008

 

The latest culture as recommended by our staff

Michael Henderson

Michael Henderson suggests


The Closed Door and Other Stories

Falling foul of fashion

Dorothy Whipple
Persephone, 229pp, £12,
Matthew Dennison
Wednesday, 17th October 2007

Matthew Dennison

J. B. Priestley described the forgotten interwar novelist Dorothy Whipple as the Jane Austen of the 20th century. Posterity has balked at this assessment — as indeed, within Whipple’s lifetime, did both publishers and readers. Although in 1932 her third novel, Greenbanks, topped the bestseller lists in the Observer and the Sunday Times, by the Fifties Whipple had fallen sufficiently foul of fashion to take an enforced extended break from writing, only later to be resumed with a series of low-key children’s books. Hers is a Barbara Pym story without the happy ending in the form of late-in-life rediscovery. Whipple’s re-emergence had to wait for the reissue of her final novel, Someone at a Distance, by Persephone in 1999, 33 years after her death. Persephone, publishers of The Closed Door, continues to champion her cause: once again, Dorothy Whipple has a following.

1 | 2  Next page 

Subscribe now

Post this entry to:   del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Comments

Post a comment


Your comment:*

Your name:*

Your email address:*
(We won't publish this)

*Required information

Please click the button only once - your comment will not be published immediately

The Spectator Parliamentarian Awards
The Spectator Billabong
Related articles

Terrors of the imagination

Paul Binding

The Beacon, by Susan Hill

Surprising literary ventures

Gary Dexter

So You Want to Try Drugs?, by Fiona Foster and Alexander McCall Smith

Living with a dark horse

Jane Ridley

The Horsey Life, by Simon Barnes

A choice of crime novels

Andrew Taylor

Alan Furst, The Spies of Warsaw
George Pelecanos, The Turnaround
Ian Rankin, Doors Open

The man with the Midas touch

Anthony Beachey

The Snowball, by Alice Schroeder

Spectator recommends

Sky TV, Broadband & Talk from £16 a Month

Sky TV & free broadband packages available from £16 a month. Choose from a standard free sky box, sky plus...


Spectator classifieds

ROME CENTRE

PORTA METRONIA, ROME Standing high on the top of one of the seven hills of Rome- the Coelian- this unique

City Breaks. ROME and PARIS

ROME and PARIS: over 350 holiday rentals apartments listed: visit  www.romanreference.com  and  www.parisreference.com or call +39 0648 903612.

Jewellery. RUFFS (Estd. 1904).

Goldsmiths by Design Welcome to Ruffs!  You have found a company of Goldsmiths that specialises in the manufacture, amongst other