Re: Hotting up the past


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Posted by PeterH on September 19, 2006 at 15:22:30 from 86.130.122.171 user Peter_H.

In Reply to: Re: Hotting up the past posted by Jock on September 19, 2006 at 13:28:40:

any TarBoarders with links to the publishing industry

Oh dear, Jock, I'm afraid that includes me, and you may feel you have heard enough from me on this topic. I worked in book publishing for over 30 years. Nevertheless:-

With respect to Jenny, I honestly don't think we should be too critical of Rosamund Lehmann, bearing in mind that she is no longer around to explain if, and if so why, she wrote that blurb in that way. Dead people cannot defend themselves. Who are we to judge her at this distance?

I can confirm that in general authors have no control at all on how their books are promoted. However, I would not be too hard on Cape either. On the dust wrappers that I have got, they put a shortened version of the Lehmann review on the back cover: Mr Ransome again equals, or perhaps excels, himself . . . every boy will vote this detective story super. This might well have been the best sentence they could lift from any of the reviews, so they used it, and at that time they would not have been as sensitive as we are to the use of the word 'boys'. You can't really blame Cape for using such a favourable quote for promotional purposes.

But now we come to modern, ie 2000, use of the quote. Here, I am with Adam Quinan, and I also think that it should have been quietly dropped. It is just possible that the publishers wished to retain the quote to preserve the books' 'history' and please the traditionalists (or 'old buffers' as Andy tolerantly calls them). But I think on the whole the Lehmann quote should be regarded as 'no longer appropriate'.

That is as strong as I would put it. And here I am going to risk reviving an old TarBoard controversy by saying that there is a continuing usage in AR's books which I do find horrifying, and which makes the 'boys' blurb pale into insignificance. It is the continued inclusion of the 'N' word. People will answer that this is a case of Ransome's own text, whereas the Lehmann quote is just a publisher's addition, but I am not sure the distinction matters much in today's climate. It is the 'N' which I really find 'horrifying' - 'boys' is a bit old hat but it isn't aggressively offensive.


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