Book Society

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Production Elspeth Huxley
She wrote it in 1946, and revised it in a state of dissatisfaction with her first version. Chatto and Windus were enthusiastic about it and offered her an advance of £150 and a royalty of...
Textual Production Lettice Cooper
LC 's Fenny (a Book Society choice, and sometimes called her finest novel), was set in or near Florence during the Second World War and the years just before and after it.
British Book News. British Council.
(1953): 421
Textual Production Laura Riding
This was the first book LR published with the new firm of Arthur Barker in London. She took some trouble to disguise identities, since Barker was worried about potential libel actions. The Book Society backed...
Reception Evelyn Waugh
The novel was a Book Society Choice.
TLS Centenary Archive Centenary Archive [1902-2012]. http://www.gale.com/c/the-times-literary-supplement-historical-archive.
(7 May 1938): 313
Writing in 2010 on the influence of the media on British Prime Ministers, Ferdinand Mount observed: pretty much all you need to know about...
Reception Storm Jameson
The Hidden River had some bad reviews in influential places, but excellent sales. It was a Book Society choice, earning £2,500 in English royalties, £268 from Book-of-the-Month Club in Canada, and a dollar amount...
Reception Evelyn Waugh
This novel was a Book Society choice.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
It brought Waugh hundreds of thousands of new American readers, and, astonishingly to him, fan-mail.
Stovel, Bruce, and Bruce Stovel. “The Genesis of Evelyn Waugh’s Comic Vision. Waugh, Captain Grimes, and <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Decline and Fall</span&gt”;. Jane Austen and Company: Collected Essays, edited by Nora Foster Stovel and Nora Foster Stovel, University of Alberta Press, pp. 181-0.
182
In early 1946 Life magazine carried his article entitled Fan-Fare, in...
Reception Rosamond Lehmann
This book received very positive reviews from (among others) Elizabeth Janeway in the New York Times, Elizabeth Bowen in New Republic, Virginia Peterson in the New York Herald Tribune, Simon Raven in...
Reception Dorothy Whipple
A reader at Curtis Brown praised DW 's very shrewd and natural gift of depicting her middle-class characters, while Lord Gorell at John Murray wrote: Much her best work and the former was good.
Whipple, Dorothy. Random Commentary. Michael Joseph.
23
Reception Lady Cynthia Asquith
The volume was a Book Society recommendation.
Beauman, Nicola. Cynthia Asquith. Hamish Hamilton.
325
Roger Fulford , reviewing it for the Times Literary Supplement, situated it among a crowd of works looking back from difficult times to an easier and...
Reception Olivia Manning
This novel was a Book Society choice (OM 's third), but was badly reviewed by Nancy Spain and Viola Garvin .
Braybrooke, Neville, and Isobel English. Olivia Manning: A Life. Chatto and Windus.
157-8
Reception Dorothy Whipple
Colonel and Mrs Williams , the owners of Parciau, were far from pleased at finding themselves and their lives portrayed in fiction.
Conville, David, and Dorothy Whipple. “Afterword”. The Priory, Persephone Books, pp. 529-36.
533
The novel, however, was again a Book Society Choice.
Whipple, Dorothy. Random Commentary. Michael Joseph.
99
It was...
Reception Ann Bridge
The Ginger Griffin was a Book Society choice, as were three later novels by AB .
Reception Nancy Mitford
This enormously successful was also well reviewed. It was a Book Society Choice, and earned NM over £7,000 in the first six months, funding her move from England to Paris.
Hastings, Selina. Nancy Mitford: A Biography. Hamish Hamilton.
168
Fraser, Antonia. “A Most Superior Street”. Spectator.co.uk. Champagne for the brain.
After its success on...
Reception Dorothy Whipple
They Were Sisters too became a Book Society Choice.
Whipple, Dorothy. Random Commentary. Michael Joseph.
147
Sales before publication day passed 32,000, and the editor of Woman's Magazine said it was of course a masterpiece.
Whipple, Dorothy. Random Commentary. Michael Joseph.
152
DW was offered by Gaumont-British
Reception Nancy Mitford
Love in a Cold Climate enjoyed great popularity. It was the first novel to be simultaneously chosen as Book of the Month by the Book Society , the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard.
Mitford, Nancy. “Critical Materials”. Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford, edited by Charlotte Mosley, Hodder and Stoughton, p. various pages.
200

Timeline

By April 1929: The Book Society (first conceived of by Arnold...

Writing climate item

By April 1929

The Book Society (first conceived of by Arnold Bennett ) was launched by Hugh Walpole with himself as chairman; it was the first such society in Britain.

1930: The Book Guild was funded, on the model of...

Building item

1930

The Book Guild was funded, on the model of the Book Society of the previous year, to cater to the needs of the intelligent but not academic (middle-brow) reader.

1944: Hodder and Stoughton, along with Alan Bott...

Writing climate item

1944

Hodder and Stoughton , along with Alan Bott of the Book Society , founded Pan Books Limited , with Aubrey Forshaw as the managing director.

Texts

No bibliographical results available.