Book Society

Connections

Connections Sort descending Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Susanna Watts
In her own more local circle, however, SW was relaxed and good company. She belonged to a Book Society . She was a close friend of the Hutton and the Coltman families and especially, in...
Literary responses Ivy Compton-Burnett
Leonard Woolf's decision proved a mistake. The book was not only praised to the skies by young, advanced reviewers, but also made the secondary Book of the Month for May by the newly-formed Book Society
Occupation Caroline Frances Cornwallis
CFC led an active life. She remarked that the political unrest of 1822 affected her because she had ordinarily my father's business to transact.
Cornwallis, Caroline Frances. Selections from the Letters of Caroline Frances Cornwallis. Editor Power, M. C., Trübner and Co., 1864.
33
She took part in the Book Society while she lived...
Occupation Pamela Frankau
She participated in Brains Trusts, both on the famous BBC television programme and as a charity event for the Cenacle Convent in Hampstead. She read books for the Book Society jury, but found this...
Occupation Rumer Godden
While living in Highgate RG took to organizing readings: at Foyles bookshop, promoting young poets; at Kenwood House; and for the Arts Council , where she spent two years on the Poetry Panel...
Occupation Pamela Hansford Johnson
PHJ worked occasionally for the BBC from the late 1940s. She later became one of the Critics team (which meant regular recording sessions), and sat on the committee of the Book Society , which she...
Publishing Pamela Frankau
At the outset of her career, in the years following Marriage of Harlequin, magazines paid her fantastic prices for short stories.
Stern, G. B. . And did he stop and speak to you?. Henry Regnery, 1958.
118
This, at the time, meant twenty-five pounds or more. On one occasion...
Publishing Dorothy Whipple
Again she felt sure the book would be a failure, judging it not properly thought out in the beginning, about nothing—stale, flat.
Whipple, Dorothy. Random Commentary. Michael Joseph, 1966.
22
Nevertheless she giggled at the thought of it as a defective offspring...
Reception Freya Stark
Recommended by the Book Society and the Book Guild , The Southern Gates of Arabia also received high praise in the Daily Telegraph, among other papers. FS , rather surprisingly, was compared to Jane Austen
Reception E. M. Delafield
Diary of a Provincial Lady received positive reviews, though some critics also drew attention to its limitations. Henry Seidel Canby praised EMD in The Saturday Review of Literature as one of the really skilful novelists...
Reception Muriel Spark
This novel was chosen a Book Society recommendation (of which between six and ten were selected per month); it was not the choice of the month, since the panel felt it was too morbid—deeply...
Reception E. H. Young
This time The Spectator, pursuing the line of excessive modernist influence, called EHY a thicker-skinned Virginia Woolf . . . but hardly less bogged in the undifferentiated welter of phenomenal experience.
qtd. in
Mezei, Kathy, and Chiara Briganti. “’She must be a very good novelist’: Rereading E. H. Young (1880-1949)”. English Studies in Canada, Vol.
27
, No. 3, Sept. 2001, pp. 303-31.
307
This novel...
Reception Vita Sackville-West
Woolf reported reading the novel all in a gulp with pleasure in bed; very well done I think.
Woolf, Virginia. The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Editors Nicolson, Nigel and Joanne Trautmann, Hogarth Press, 1975–1980, 6 vols.
5: 214
It was a Book Society Choice, recommended by Clemence Dane and Hugh Walpole , and...
Reception Barbara Pym
The sales of this second novel nearly doubled those of Pym's first: Excellent Women sold 5,477 copies in the two months to June 1952, while Some Tame Gazelle sold only 3,722 in the thirteen years...
Reception Pamela Frankau
Reviews were highly positive. The Sunday Times said that PFuses a large canvas with great deftness, and her dialogue is a joy.
qtd. in
Frankau, Pamela. The Willow Cabin. Pan Books, 1966.
back cover
John o'London's mentioned her near-genius for story-telling, and the Observer...

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.
Spurling, Hilary. Secrets of a Woman’s Heart. Hodder and Stoughton, 1984.
23
Feather, John. A History of British Publishing. Croom Helm, 1988.
187-8

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.
Mezei, Kathy, and Chiara Briganti. “’She must be a very good novelist’: Rereading E. H. Young (1880-1949)”. English Studies in Canada, Vol.
27
, No. 3, Sept. 2001, pp. 303-31.
305

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.
Rose, Jonathan, and Patricia J. Anderson, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 112. Gale Research, 1991.
244
Mumby, Frank Arthur, and Ian Norrie. Mumby’s Publishing and Bookselling in the Twentieth Century. 6th ed., Bell and Hyman, 1982.
90

Texts

No bibliographical results available.