Spectator competition winners: publishers rejecting literary classics

In Competition No. 3181 you were invited to submit a letter by a publisher rejecting a well-known literary classic.

The authors of Lolita and The Bell Jar (‘an ill-conceived, poorly written novel’) are among distinguished recipients of multiple rejections. And T.S. Eliot famously turned down George Orwell’s Animal Farm (its shortcomings included the wrong type of pig).

Orwell came in for a bit of a battering in the entry, too; Barry Baldwin wasn’t wasting any ink with his take-down: ‘DOUBLEPLUS-UNGOOD’. Many entrants (though not all) wrote from the point of view of a contemporary publisher, and works were often rejected on the grounds that their world-view, lacking in inclusivity of one kind or another, clashes with prevailing cultural orthodoxies. Here’s part of Laura Freeman’s response to John of Patmos: ‘Your “Whore of Babylon” passage is necessarily problematic. Female colleagues were uncomfortable with Ms Babylon’s self-identification as “Mother of Harlots and Abominations.”’