The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler

Heyer ' has fallen into a strange and rather airless niche market,' writes Fowler, meaning the fans of Heyer's beloved Regency romances, apparently.

There's now also a second biography of Heyer, published less than two years ago. K., I'm not sure what it is (maybe those early, self-suppressed mainstream novels?). I'll say she's not! In fact, if there's anything by Heyer that's not in print, both in the U. Okay, I'll accept that yet there are some questionable statements too, like when Fowler writes that one of his 'disappeared' authors, Georgette Heyer, ' is not entirely out of print.' There are a few oddities to Invisible Ink that should be noted, some arising out of discordance with that subtitle, some perhaps out of the fact that the columns were written for an English newspaper and may not have been updated before appearing in book form (there also is no table of contents, which is rather exasperating in a list book).įor example, Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde are two of Fowler's forgotten/disappeared authors, and- Wait, what?! you might be saying right now.Īh, but you see, what Fowler means is that certain works of theirs are forgotten, or not as well known than they should be. Not having read most of these columns, I was interested to see Fowler's thoughts on this subject in book form. It's a small book of about 200 pages that collects his Independent columns on the subject of 'forgotten authors' from the last several years. Looking at Fowler's blog I found that he recently published in England a short book on past writers, Invisible Ink: How 100 Great Authors Disappeared (2012). Maintaining as I do a blog that is to a great extent righteously devoted to keeping alive the memory of old mysteries, I naturally was pleased to see Fowler's impassioned advocacy for yesterday's crime fiction. Fowler urged that more modern crime writers look back (like he does) to the past. Readers of this blog will recall how I discussed Christopher Fowler's recent piece decrying what he sees as the omnipresence of police procedural gloom in modern British crime writing. Fowler! If you love old books, particularly mystery novels from the 1920s through the 1960s, Christopher Fowler's Invisble Ink is a book for you. ' Sadly, we live in a time where there is no patienceįor barmy British sleuths who uncover insanely complex murders.'Īnd how sad that is, isn't it, Mr.

The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler