South Riding by Winifred Holtby was first published, posthumously, in 1936. The story is about a young headmistress living in a fictional Yorkshire neighbourhood; and the book itself has lived a fairly innocuous life in the midlist for over half a century until last week when Andrew Davies three part mini-series began to air on BBC One.
Sales of the book have spiked in a serious way, the novel was the bestselling book on AbeBooks.co.uk last week (on the heels of the first BBC episode) and it looks as if it will be one of our bestsellers on AbeBooks.co.uk in February.
This was not the first adaptation in the books history. The novel was first adapted for the big screen in 1938 starring Edna Best as Sarah Burton (the headmistress), Ralph Richardson as Robert Carne (a man tormented by his marriage) and Edmund Gwenn as Alfred Huggins (the sanctimonious hypocrite). Then in 1974 it was adapted for television by Yorkshire Television. BBC Radio 4 has done a radio version starring Sarah Lancashire and Philip Glenister in 1999.
Normally the prize is only given for fiction but in this one special case the Bad Sex Award judges bent the rules and are letting Tony Blair into the running for this little atrocity which made its way into the former Prime Minister’s autobiography A Journey:
That night she cradled me in her arms and soothed me; told me what I needed to be told; strengthened me. On that night of 12 May 1994, I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly. I devoured it to give me strength. I was an animal following my instinct…
The Telegraph reports that the offical shortlist will be unveiled next month but “sources said: Tony Blair’s book is definitely up there.”
Our friends at BookFinder.com have released their annual “BookFinder Report” on the 100 most sought after out-of-print books in America. I enjoy looking at this list each year because it features everything I love about used book shops in one tidy list. A nice mix of nearly forgotten fiction, old manuals that are superior to any modern reprint and cool art books that have fallen through the cracks.
It also brought a smile to my face seeing Fly Fishing by J.R. Hartley show up in the list. This, of course, is the book that anyone who lived in the UK in the 1980s would remember from the now classic Yellow Pages TV advert which featured an man traipsing around London’s used book shops looking for an old book, only finding success with the telephone directory.
Neither the book, nor the author, existed at the time of the when Yellow Pages created this commercial. So why, you may ask, is this book found in the BookFinder.com report?
The beauty of this whole scenario is that in 1991 a spoof memoir by the fictional Mr. Hartley was published due to the popularity of the ad, and now the spoof is the out-of-print book which is sought after. It kind of reminds me of the time paradox in Terminator, only with used books instead of cyborgs.
Five of the six writers shortlisted for this year’s incarnation of the Dylan Thomas Award, which is a £30,000 prize given to the best published writer in English who is under 30.
Caroline Bird: UK poet and playwright, 23, the first writer to be nominated twice for the prize – for her third collection Watering Can
Nadifa Mohamed: Novelist, 28, who said Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood was the inspiration for her work Black Mamba Boy which describes a journey from her Somalia homeland to Port Talbot
Eleanor Catton: Novelist 24, who grew up in New Zealand explores the controversial topic of an affair between a high school girl and her teacher in The Rehearsal
Karan Mahajan: Indian-born, 26 and the only man on the shortlist, with his debut novel Family Planning
Elyse Fenton: US poet, 29, with her acclaimed collection Clamor, a book of war poety in which a woman reflects on her lover fighting in Afghanistan
Emilie Mackie: Born in Winchester, aged 27, she based her novel And This is True in the Scottish Highlands where she grew up
The winner will be announced on 1 December.
Posted on Sep 22nd, 2010 by slaming in UK, awards |
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