Neglected books page

[Cometman]

The Neglected Books Page  
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The Neglected Books Page
 
www.NeglectedBooks.com: Where forgotten books are remembered
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"But every time I go into the university library and wander down the aisles of English and American literature, I have to wonder: Does the world really need yet another bit of writing about Edith Wharton or D. H. Lawrence or F. Scott Fitzgerald? These writers are like those hotels with 10,000 reviews on Tripadvisor. Checking today, the current count on Goodreads for The Age of Innocence stands at 134,391 ratings and 6,378 reviews. Stop. Just stop. Will yet one more opinion make any difference?
I don’t pretend that every book I write about on this site is a masterpiece. I hope no one feels obligated to read anything I’ve featured here. But I do try to shine a little light on the things that few or none have read and written about for years, often decades. That, in its own humble way, seems to be adding something original to the world.

I want to encourage you to do the same. Go off-piste, as they say in skiing. Read and write about something from 1920 that no one else will. Maybe it’ll just be ho-hum, no life-changer, maybe too flawed to recommend to anyone else. Some books are neglected for good reasons, and you will do the reading public the service of warning them off. Maybe it’ll surprise you: who knew Elisabeth Sanxay Holding wrote straight fiction before she got into writing mysteries? Tell the English reading public about Polish novelist Zofja Nakowska’s first major novel, Kobiety (Women). Do you agree with Orlo Williams that Storm Jameson’s first novel, The Happy Highways, is just full of “Talk, talk, talk”? Is Stephen Hudson the English Marcel Proust? Chances are good that you’ll be the first, or at least one of the very few, to have traveled down that piste in many, many seasons. Every rediscovered masterpiece has to have its first rediscovery.

So here are a selection of long-forgotten titles...."