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May. 31st, 2022
Well, yes, I'm sure we are missing some lost master/mistressworks; and being an archivist one knows how haphazard is the survival/nonsurvival of anything -
- but on another paw, just because somebody was being lauded as TEH GRAYTEST in their day:
Yet in his lifetime Shakespeare was responding to a rich and varied literary ecosystem. His contemporaries also recognised other greats – including a poet named Thomas Watson whose lauded plays have almost all been lost (only one survives, his version of Sophocles’ Antigone written in Latin). Who knows how we would judge Shakespeare – whom one contemporary described as “Watson’s heir” – had the full spectrum of English literature from his time, or the eras before and after him, survived.doesn't actually mean that, if their works survived, they would still be thus considered, their plays produced, their novels in print, or their oeuvre be of interest except to a few dedicated academics. We only have to look back at who were considered BIG in their day....
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Indeed, I am somewhat aghast at some of the selections here: Jubilee books special: our favourite 50 novels of the past 70 years - in fact they pretty much lost me as soon as I saw WOT they do not include The Fountain Overflows:
PD James but no Rendell/Vine? No Lessing? No Drabble? No Byatt? (Surely Possession should be there.) And a really weak Pratchett. (Do not get me started on Y No Mitchison.) (And I am depressingly used to the neglect of darling Sir Angus Wilson.)Not impressed by The Times critics' taste.
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And also in Dept Weird Omissions, Top 10 difficult marriages in fiction - where are the Pringles in Olivia Manning's Balkan and Levant Trilogies (Manning another Missing Person from the Times list; and Patrick Melrose's parents in Edward St Aubyn's Melrose sequence (which at least does make the cut).