A Christmas Gift Idea for a Bookish Person

Book collectors and literature history enthusiasts or anyone who has spent time browsing the shelves of secondhand and antiquarian bookshops may have often picked up a book and wondered about the story behind the book held in their hands, or the author of this once popular publication.  So many names who were once a topic of playground talk from an age when reading was more popular than the latest computer games or celebrity Facebook, but whose names in this age of the internet are now all but forgotten   However, help is now at hand, because earlier this year children’s literature academic Dennis Butts published a series of fascinating essays exploring some of these lost children’s authors and publishers.  Dennis Butts is a former chairman of the Children’s Books History Society and taught children’s literature at Reading University.  He has a life-long interest in the relationship between politics, society and literature and has written on many aspects of children’s books.

His new book, The Vagaries of Fame: Some Successes and Failures in Children’s Literature is available exclusively through Amazon, as a print on demand paperback publication and now as a downloadable Kindle book.  In an age where writers such as J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series have achieved global fame, The Vagaries of Fame examines more closely the lives and works authors including Gillian Avery, William Mayne, Percy F. Westerman, Dr William Gordon Stables and F. W. Farrar.  Farrar’s school-story Eric, or Little by Little first published in 1858, became enormously popular, selling thousands of copies, and reaching a 43rd edition by 1919, but today it is almost forgotten; lost to the dusty corners of a few secondhand bookshops, but still valued by some collectors. 

In this book Dennis takes each of the authors, discusses their popularity at the time and suggests reasons why they may have fallen from grace.  He also explores the rise and fall of the birth of the technological age at the BBC and their groundbreaking ‘Children’s Hour’ programmes and takes a look at some of the once popular publishing houses that have since been lost in the mists of time.

A recent review in The Children’s Books History Society Newsletter said ‘Dennis Butts wears his knowledge lightly and presents his subjects and his opinions with a refreshing energy...’ and Nigel Gossop from the Westerman Yarns Collection said ‘This is such a useful and immensely readable and informative book; a great reference source and a wonderful gift for anyone with an interest in collecting or learning more about children’s literature.’

Search for The Vagaries of Fame by Dennis Butts on Amazon.

The Vagaries of Fame: Some Successes and Failures in Children’s Literature - A new book by Dennis Butts

Dennis and I back in 2011 at Portsmouth Grammar School

A new book by children’s literature history specialist Dennis Butts, includes a chapter dedicated to Percy F. Westerman and is now available from Amazon Publishing.  

In an age where writers such as J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series have achieved global fame, this new book The Vagaries of Fame: Some Successes and Failures in Children’s Literature examines the lives and works of some authors and their books who, having achieved popularity, have since disappeared from bookshop shelves, libraries and publisher’s lists, never to return.

Dennis said, “This is a topic that I have been considering for some while; to explore the ways certain authors and their books, having achieved great success for a time, seem to have disappeared from public favour, such as F. W. Farrar’s school-story Eric, or Little by Little first published in 1858, it became enormously popular, selling thousands of copies, and reaching a 43^rd edition by 1919, but today it is almost forgotten.”

The Vagaries of Fame is a carefully considered collection of informative essays discussing ephemeral successes, ranging from the eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart, taking in nineteenth-century writers including William Brighty Rands, Percy F. Westerman and Dr Gordon Stables and including such cultural phenomena as the juvenile drama Where the Rainbow Ends, children’s comics and the BBC’s Children’s Hour.   Modern writers discussed include Gillian Avery and William Mayne and a concluding chapter looks at ‘one-off’ successes, such as Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty.

Ideological, technical and generic factors all play their part in this consideration of the vagaries of literary reputations, in an attempt to understand some of the reasons for the failure and decline of what were once popular juvenile literary successes.

The Vagaries of Fame, priced at £10.00 is a print-on demand Amazon Publication.

Dennis Butts is a former chairman of the Children’s Books History Society and taught

children’s literature at Reading University.  He was a regular contributor to the Westerman Yarns Newsletters and was an ardent supporter of the Westerman Seminars.  With a life-long interest in the relationship between politics, society and literature he has written on many aspects of children’s books.  His recent publications include Children’s Literature and Social Change (2010), and with Peter Hunt, How Did Long John Silver Lose His Leg? and Twenty-Six Other Mysteries of Children’s Literature (2013) and Why Was Billy Bunter Never Really Expelled? and another Twenty-Five Mysteries of Children’s Literature (2019) (all published by Lutterworth Press).

Sailing into Portchester Castle

I am currently transcribing some of the sailing logs and articles that Percy wrote; some for publication and others for his own records.  I have just found a reference to Portchester Castle that featured in the story The Prisoner of War -  A tale of Portchester Castle During the Napoleonic Wars, posted on this site in October last year.  Interesting to note that he visited the castle in the spring of 1905, sailing up to the watergate in his vessel Clytie I.

"Right ahead rose the massive square tower of Portchester Castle, and practically at high water we ran ashore at a hard near a little quay by the watergate of the castle.  Here we spent a couple of hours in wandering round the interesting old ruin, for interesting it certainly is, though possessing practically no history of romantic character".

Maybe his visit prompted him to give the castle some of the 'romantic character' that he thought it lacked.