Scribbles in the Margins by Daniel Gray

Author:Daniel Gray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

25

Discovering an author with a back catalogue to catch up on

Out there, sleeping on shelves and buried in cupboards, are favourite authors we don’t yet know we love. The thought is tantalising. Fate must intervene to turn our heads in their direction – a recommendation by a friend, a written reference from another trusted writer or a chance find in a charity shop.

However the words of the previously unfound writer reach us, niggling feelings of time wasted and Where have you been all my life? hang on their coat-tails for a little while. Then a truth washes over us. Progressing and imbibing the first of theirs we have read, a realisation dawns that an author scarcely ever stops at one book. There may even be a list of other works within the pages of this first foray. Better still, an old title’s ‘also by’ list will have been constructed mid-career – turns of direction and changes in pace yet to be charted. The heart soars. The end has no end. A new world beckons.

Having a list to work through adds a layer of pursuit. If an author expired some time ago, there is work to be done and thrill in the chase. Visits to second-hand bookshops now have a side mission beyond escapism, and the discovery of a chased author in the faraway nook of a charity store brings a gold-rush kick. Online trawls begin broadly but one day come to fill vital gaps – that 1938 first edition, that copy with a Foreword by George Bernard Shaw. Perhaps, to curb excess, rules are needed: no writer should be read at the exclusion of all others, so we resolve to read only our new love’s pre-war fiction. It won’t last, of course, but for now ours is the bounteous meadow with winter whole months away.

We order and guzzle our author’s first three novels, noting the subtle shifting of styles. From this vantage, it is possible to speculate what informed such swings: did the coming of conflict lead to the darkening of this book’s mood?; the finding of love sprinkle lightness upon another’s? Physically, shifts in time can make your retrospective collection of editions and reissues a ragtag one when placed together, spine heights rising and falling like the crumbling turrets of an ancient fort. Cover designs fluctuate from art-deco lines of the 1930s to 1970s camp, the author’s name growing in size and then shrinking again, perhaps reflecting shifts in appeal, fame and fortune. Not that this feeling is confined to yesteryear writers in starchy suits. The belated discovery of a modern author with form offers the pleasures of a past, present and future. They can be traced backwards, read until caught up with and then anticipated, which is a fresh branch to this delight. Our author may even be popular, and incite mutually admiring conversation. Perhaps, consciously or not, we have shunned her, and now can rejoice in our error.

What a thought, that there is someone out there, waiting to be discovered, and perfect for us.

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