Great crime novels from the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. I've been introduced to a lot of authors who are mostly forgotten these days but back then were equal to - if not better than - the ubiquitous Agatha Christie. People like Freeman Wills Croft, John Bude, Carol Carnac, Anthony Berkeley, Christiana Brand and many many more. So far, my collection of these books totals over 80!
A particular recent like was Murder After Christmas by Rupert Latimer. It's very funny, with everybody lying in the attempt to protect each other. Trying work out what actually happened is very difficult. It would make a wonderful TV special.
Another favourite (for very different reasons) is Before The Fact by Francis Iles (a pen name for Anthony Berkeley Cox). This was made into the film Suspicion by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant. I won't give away the details, except to say that whilst Cary Grant is excellent, the book is far darker than the film and the ending is far far darker and more shocking than Hollywood would ever have allowed.
You might enjoy the Shedunnit podcast on BBC Sounds, which is all about Golden Age crime fiction.
Other than Ransome (always good - his books were long and he never talked down to you) I read a good deal of Monica Edwards as a child.
PD James was never really popular with other crime writers; a poll many years ago threw up Josephine Tey as 'the crime-writers' favourite crime-writer' - and she is indeed excellent.
Peter Dickinson also a strong candidate for resurrection in the crime field. He really should have been given the Diamond Dagger (for lifetime achievement). His range - children's, adolescents', adults' - is wide and always thoughtful, often with an unorthdox spiritual element, and he was a born story-teller. The Seventh Raven, The Ropemaker, Tulku, King and Joker or the more well-known Weathermonger are all good places to start. Read one and I'm pretty sure you'd want to find more.
For a longer read I always return to Trollope, the most humane of the 'big' 19C English novelists, and especially good with women characters.
Originally posted by March Hare: a poll many years ago threw up Josephine Tey as 'the crime-writers' favourite crime-writer' - and she is indeed excellent.
Josephine Tey is excellent, but one of her books - The Franchise Affair - has aged so badly that I think it is now unreadable.
For a longer read I always return to Trollope, the most humane of the 'big' 19C English novelists, and especially good with women characters.
That's a good way to describe him. He may not always have had the rigour of Eliot, or the ability to disguise the material put in to make up three volumes, but his emotional and moral judgement are impressive.
The author photo on every one of the children's books shows an old buffer you'd swear had done nothing adventurous in his life, not a man who knocked around Riga, met the Russian revolutionary leaders and married - eventually, after finally divorcing his first wife - Trotsky's secretary. He'd lived his own 'ripping yarns'.
The Eagle of the Ninth was adapted for TV in the 1970s, which is how I first learned about Rosemary Sutcliffe IIRC. I did like her books, but some of them are very dark... several have the protagonist being sacrificed at the end. One of her particular strengths was the way she portrayed her characters' relationships with animals: affectionate but not overly sentimental.
I also read Monica Edwards when I was young. I wanted to be Tamsin, mainly because I wanted her pony. I read a lot of other pony books too, by authors who are nearly all out of print now. Patricia Leitch was still in print last time I checked, but I don't remember any others. The pony book genre has survived, but modern authors include a lot more squabbling and backbiting between the riders than I remember from the books I read. Some of the characters even have mobile phones.
I’m not sure what happened to my Monica Edwards books. I still have the Ruby Ferguson, on the subject of horse books, and my daughter had the full Flambards set so I reread those a few years ago. (They didn’t inspire me to take up riding!)
As a horse-mad kid I loved Pat Smythe's books about 'The Three Jays' - as far as I can remember there were half a dozen or so books in a series and I saved my pocket money to get them as soon as she'd had them published. I'd completely forgotten them until Aravis posted about pony books!
When I was about 10 I enjoyed Anthony Buckeridge's "Jennings" books; I also liked John Pudney's. Both are, I think, very much of their time. Hammond Innes is another author who seems to have fallen out of favour.
Kingsley Amis? Malcolm Bradbury? John Braine? Colin Wilson? All those angry young men became (mainly miserable) old men and have faded away.
Do teenagers still 'discover' D H Lawrence? I can't quite believe it.
With books for adults, if you look at the list of Nobel prize winners for literature over the last 1¼ century, even sticking to those who wrote in English some most people will have at least heard of, but by no means all. Unless you check in Wikipedia, who was Pearl Buck, winner in 1938?
There's a certain level of Buggins turn at work with such awards -- though afaik Pearl Buck wasn't in that category - but even that aside, from the start of the list, and restricting it to authors writing in English you have Kipling, Tagore, Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and Sinclair Lewis.
Mr F and I have been working our way through the oeuvre of Gladys Mitchell who wrote detective novels from the the 1920s until the 1970s.
@Firenze, you suggested Gladys Mitchell to me a while back and I'd rank her with Dorothy L Sayers and better than most Agatha Christie. Especially good on druids, witchcraft or eerie moments in marshes, and her detective Mrs Bradley is shrewder (albeit more Freudian) than Marple or Poirot.
I'm enthralled by several women authors nobody seems to read now, though they have smallish cult followings: Sylvia Townsend Warner, Ivy Compton Burnett, Barbara Pym. And South African authors like Olive Schreiner ( Story of an African Farm) and Pauline Smith's stories of the early 1900s in the Klein Karoo are wonderful.
I still haven't read Olive Schreiner but I should - I am haunted by an all too brief stay in the Karoo. I loved Eve Palmer's The Plains of Camdeboo.
You might try and find a copy of Eve Palmer's Return to Camdeboo with some of the best Karoo lamb recipes I know. Some years ago I stayed on the old Palmer homestead in the Camdeboo, a farm steeped in history. When were you in the Karoo, @Stercus Tauri?
I love a Brother Cadfael mystery and they were popular at the library when I worked in public libraries late 80's and early 90's. Other authors who required purchase of multiple copies, were Catherine Cookson, Maeve Binchy and Wilbur Smith. We had a large set of Jalna novels in large print too.
I went through a pony phase with a lot of the Jill books as well as those written by the Pullein Thompsons. I read both William and Jennings books and loved those by Lois Lenski. In my primary school years the public library had very dated bookstock as did another public library I visited as a teenager, where I borrowed facsimile copies of The Magnet (very tiny print), and nearly all the Billabong books (a famous Australian series for girls).
I'm another who very much enjoys the British Library Crime Classics. I went on a total Cyril Hare jag a while ago.
As a child I very much enjoyed Geoffrey Trease’s historical novels but haven’t seen one of those in years.
60-70 years ago I read a lot of James Thurber. I still have those books (somewhere) on my bookshelves. Do people still read him today? I loved the clear prose and understated humour.
As to the 1950s 'angry young men', I could never understand what they were so angry about.
Sad most became MOS's (miserable old scroats).
Do teenagers still 'discover' D H Lawrence? I can't quite believe it.
🤣 They're far too busy reading 'Twilight' - the ones who still read, that is. There are more of them than you might think.
I only read about two paragraphs of 'Women in Love' before giving up, so I am not really qualified to judge, but my father-in-law always referred to him as 'the man who made sex boring.'
In grammar school when I was about 14 IIRC, someone brought a copy Of Lady Chatterley when it was released for general reading. Someone pointed out the "juicy" bits, and I then wondered what all the fuss about.
I’m not sure what happened to my Monica Edwards books. I still have the Ruby Ferguson, on the subject of horse books, and my daughter had the full Flambards set so I reread those a few years ago. (They didn’t inspire me to take up riding!)
There's a Monica Edwards Appreciation Group on Facebook that has annual meet ups in either Rye Harbour (Westling) or Thursley (for Punchbowl Farm). This year in May it's Thursley.
There's a certain level of Buggins turn at work with such awards -- though afaik Pearl Buck wasn't in that category - but even that aside, from the start of the list, and restricting it to authors writing in English you have Kipling, Tagore, Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and Sinclair Lewis.
I thought Tagore wrote in Bengali?
What makes the above authors examples of Buggins' turn?
Kipling is still the youngest ever winner. (Yeats is a possibly unique example of a writer who did their best work after winning the prize.)
There's a certain level of Buggins turn at work with such awards -- though afaik Pearl Buck wasn't in that category - but even that aside, from the start of the list, and restricting it to authors writing in English you have Kipling, Tagore, Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and Sinclair Lewis.
I thought Tagore wrote in Bengali?
AFAIK he translated some of his works (particularly the poems) into English himself.
What makes the above authors examples of Buggins' turn?
They aren't necessarily, I was just pointing to that tendency as an explanation for why some Nobel Laureates aren't particularly well remembered now (even though a fair number are - hence the list).
Thinking of meet ups in the locations of book series, there used to be a chap who led walks around the Long Mynd for Malcolm Saville fans. He set the Lone Pine Five books there (with a few in other places like Rye)
Do teenagers still 'discover' D H Lawrence? I can't quite believe it.
I only read about two paragraphs of 'Women in Love' before giving up, so I am not really qualified to judge, but my father-in-law always referred to him as 'the man who made sex boring.'
I should say your father-in-law was bang on the money.
I liked the movie, and I liked the book. I think it’s fair to consider the movie “loosely adapted” from the book.
Ah, good to know! Thanks.
I’m struck by how many authors that have been mentioned in this thread are authors I’ve never heard of. These unfamiliar-to-me authors pretty much all seem to have been mentioned by shipmates in the UK or perhaps Ireland, so it makes me wonder if there’s a Pond difference at work.
Me too. If you told me that most of the authors named in this thread were fictitious themselves, I wouldn't bat an eye.
The same thing happens when television shows or comedians are mentioned on the Ship; I find very little overlap, across time and across the Pond, with my own experiences.
Great crime novels from the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s. I've been introduced to a lot of authors who are mostly forgotten these days but back then were equal to - if not better than - the ubiquitous Agatha Christie. People like Freeman Wills Croft, John Bude, Carol Carnac, Anthony Berkeley, Christiana Brand and many many more. So far, my collection of these books totals over 80!
I am also a fan of British Library Crime Classics and, by coincidence, I just started an audio book by Freeman Wills Croft ("The Box Office Murders").
Leonaur publishes an astonishing array of fiction from forgotten authors, or authors better known for other works. For example, they have Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger stories; and I just saw they have a volume of Kipling's science fiction stories...never knew he wrote any! They also offer a vast array of ghost/horror fiction, including multiple volumes of Algernon Blackwood stories. So, presumably, somebody is still reading these things!
I read some Malcolm Saville, but the annoyingly childish twins put me off. Arthur Ransome was a good read though I didn’t discover his books until I was an adult.
I used to love the Jennings books - far better than Enid Blyton’s school stories.
Thinking of meet ups in the locations of book series, there used to be a chap who led walks around the Long Mynd for Malcolm Saville fans. He set the Lone Pine Five books there (with a few in other places like Rye)
When I first worked in libraries in the early 1970s the shelves were full of Mazo de la Roche Jalna series. I never read it and don’t know any one else who did either.
I discovered the Jalna series about 1963 & read my way through the series ( not in chronological order) until 1966. I recall my father had one paperback( “Young Renny”) at home & 🏠 discovered the rest at the public library over the next few years. Borrowing the books was tricky as they were deemed to be “adult” in those days: i needed a parent to declare to the librarian that they were OK with my reading them.
I liked the movie, and I liked the book. I think it’s fair to consider the movie “loosely adapted” from the book.
Ah, good to know! Thanks.
I’m struck by how many authors that have been mentioned in this thread are authors I’ve never heard of. These unfamiliar-to-me authors pretty much all seem to have been mentioned by shipmates in the UK or perhaps Ireland, so it makes me wonder if there’s a Pond difference at work.
Me too. If you told me that most of the authors named in this thread were fictitious themselves, I wouldn't bat an eye.
The same thing happens when television shows or comedians are mentioned on the Ship; I find very little overlap, across time and across the Pond, with my own experiences.
Surprised that no US posters have mentioned kids’ books by the Anericans Elizabeth Enright ( “The Saturdays” etc) or Eleanor Estes (“ Pinky Pye” etc). They were quite a presence in the libraries in my Antipodean youth: Estes wrote about WW1 America and Enright rather later ( 1930s-40s). Perhaps I’m showing my age….
I liked the movie, and I liked the book. I think it’s fair to consider the movie “loosely adapted” from the book.
Ah, good to know! Thanks.
I’m struck by how many authors that have been mentioned in this thread are authors I’ve never heard of. These unfamiliar-to-me authors pretty much all seem to have been mentioned by shipmates in the UK or perhaps Ireland, so it makes me wonder if there’s a Pond difference at work.
Me too. If you told me that most of the authors named in this thread were fictitious themselves, I wouldn't bat an eye.
The same thing happens when television shows or comedians are mentioned on the Ship; I find very little overlap, across time and across the Pond, with my own experiences.
Surprised that no US posters have mentioned kids’ books by the Anericans Elizabeth Enright ( “The Saturdays” etc) or Eleanor Estes (“ Pinky Pye” etc). They were quite a presence in the libraries in my Antipodean youth: Estes wrote about WW1 America and Enright rather later ( 1930s-40s). Perhaps I’m showing my age….
I’m not American, but I still have Elizabeth Enright’s books and read them.
Here in Oz the kids’ books written by Rosemary Sutcliffe, Ian Seraillier, Geoffrey Trease and Rumer Godden were huge hits in the 1950s and 60s. By the late 70s they disappeared without trace.
It's amazing what societies there are out there. A professional contact of mine, with his wife, manages the Rupert Bear society (it may have another name. Something to do with Nutwood, possibly?) Now that has to be a very select band, surely.
A friend of mine is a member of a John Masefield appreciation society. They have a 'Scrobblefest' every year. I have read The Box of Delights myself but can't see the appeal: I prefer Joan Aiken and Diana Wynne Jones for fantastical literature. Although people are still reading them, so maybe I shouldn't mention them on this thread.
I liked the movie, and I liked the book. I think it’s fair to consider the movie “loosely adapted” from the book.
Ah, good to know! Thanks.
I’m struck by how many authors that have been mentioned in this thread are authors I’ve never heard of. These unfamiliar-to-me authors pretty much all seem to have been mentioned by shipmates in the UK or perhaps Ireland, so it makes me wonder if there’s a Pond difference at work.
Me too. If you told me that most of the authors named in this thread were fictitious themselves, I wouldn't bat an eye.
The same thing happens when television shows or comedians are mentioned on the Ship; I find very little overlap, across time and across the Pond, with my own experiences.
Surprised that no US posters have mentioned kids’ books by the Anericans Elizabeth Enright ( “The Saturdays” etc) or Eleanor Estes (“ Pinky Pye” etc). They were quite a presence in the libraries in my Antipodean youth: Estes wrote about WW1 America and Enright rather later ( 1930s-40s). Perhaps I’m showing my age….
I’m afraid this American has never heard of them, or at least doesn’t recall hearing of them. Which may say more about me . . . .
Authors mentioned so far in this thread whom I've read:
Geoffrey Trease
Rosemary Sutcliffe
Rumer Godden
Eleanor Estes
Some "Brother Cadfael" books
Jean Plaidy
Mary Stewart
Anya Seton
Agatha Christie
A bit of AC Doyle, Joseph Conrad, and Jonathan Swift in university.
Heard of, but not read:
JRR Tolkien
Mazo de la Roche. (I tried reading Jalna, got bored and left.)
All other authors in this thread are Persons Unknown to me.
*Let me also forestall other readers here who may feel my reading life has been sorely lacking and that your own has been superior; may I assure you that you are mistaken and that any perceived superiority is misplaced.
Many of the childhood books I read were by "composite authors" from publishing houses: The Bobbsey Twins, Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys. The latter two occasionally pop up in televised versions, but I don't know whether any are read anymore.
The thing about children's literature is that it's often very firmly rooted in a specific time and culture. That makes it appealing to the target audience, of course, but it also means it is less likely to appeal to someone from a different context. I read 'Five Children and It' and other books by E. Nesbit when I was a child, but never even tried to get my daughter interested in them. Too dated to be relatable, not old enough to be historically interesting.
Maybe I am oversimplifying it, but if books are still actively being published, I assume that means there is a current audience for them. A quick check on Amazon tells me that a Kindle version of the first Nancy Drew book ("The Secret of the Old Clock") was released in November of 2025. The Hardy Boys similarly are still being published. The books are still in print and easy to obtain, suggesting that they remain popular and are still read.
Maybe I am oversimplifying it, but if books are still actively being published, I assume that means there is a current audience for them. A quick check on Amazon tells me that a Kindle version of the first Nancy Drew book ("The Secret of the Old Clock") was released in November of 2025. The Hardy Boys similarly are still being published. The books are still in print and easy to obtain, suggesting that they remain popular and are still read.
The Stratemeyer Syndicate pioneered the model under which both series were originally written by multiple ghost writers publishing under a common pseudonym. That practice continues through both series -- and they've both been - essentially - "rebooted" multiple times, continuity errors and all, which enables them to be adapted to contemporary society.
I liked the movie, and I liked the book. I think it’s fair to consider the movie “loosely adapted” from the book.
Ah, good to know! Thanks.
I’m struck by how many authors that have been mentioned in this thread are authors I’ve never heard of. These unfamiliar-to-me authors pretty much all seem to have been mentioned by shipmates in the UK or perhaps Ireland, so it makes me wonder if there’s a Pond difference at work.
Me too. If you told me that most of the authors named in this thread were fictitious themselves, I wouldn't bat an eye.
The same thing happens when television shows or comedians are mentioned on the Ship; I find very little overlap, across time and across the Pond, with my own experiences.
Surprised that no US posters have mentioned kids’ books by the Anericans Elizabeth Enright ( “The Saturdays” etc) or Eleanor Estes (“ Pinky Pye” etc). They were quite a presence in the libraries in my Antipodean youth: Estes wrote about WW1 America and Enright rather later ( 1930s-40s). Perhaps I’m showing my age….
I’m not American, but I still have Elizabeth Enright’s books and read them.
I loved Elizabeth Enright. The one about the family that move house, and the main kid is Miranda, called Randy for short, and she is really unhappy about the move, but ends up liking it, because she and her siblings have adventures.
And this makes me think of another book, by another author - The Suddenly Gang. The main character, who I think is a boy, is going to write a book (I think Randy was also writing something - this is the connection in my mind) and writes 'Suddenly,' and is going to continue but doesn't need to, because the adventure happens in real life. From googling, the author is Barbara Willard.
Maybe I am oversimplifying it, but if books are still actively being published, I assume that means there is a current audience for them. A quick check on Amazon tells me that a Kindle version of the first Nancy Drew book ("The Secret of the Old Clock") was released in November of 2025. The Hardy Boys similarly are still being published. The books are still in print and easy to obtain, suggesting that they remain popular and are still read.
I was thinking this. I found a recent edition of Bogwoppit (by Ursula Moray Williams) in a charity shop recently, so I imagine some kids are still reading it. I loved it as a kid, and enjoyed the reread.
Anyone remember Gwen Grant's book Private - Keep Out? About a kid in a big family in a rough neighbourhood in Nottinghamshire, who decides to write about her life. I loved that book as a kid, and the sequel, Knock and Wait, where she is ill and gets sent to some sanitarium type place. They sadly did go out of print, but the first one eventually got printed again, so I enjoyed rereading it a few years ago.
Maybe I am oversimplifying it, but if books are still actively being published, I assume that means there is a current audience for them. A quick check on Amazon tells me that a Kindle version of the first Nancy Drew book ("The Secret of the Old Clock") was released in November of 2025. The Hardy Boys similarly are still being published. The books are still in print and easy to obtain, suggesting that they remain popular and are still read.
I'm not sure that the availability of online versions tells us anything about the size of demand. Unlike a physical printing, there's effectively no cost to the publisher in keeping the book available, no stocks taking up warehouse space, and no minimum print run. Similarly with 'print on demand'.
What it might tell you is how many grandparents/great-aunts and great-uncles are buying books they remember reading in their childhood for the children they know 😈
I'm not surprised Nancy Drew (and the Hardy Boys?) are still in print. Easy reads, long-running series, etc. I haven't noticed them in our local children's libraries, but maybe I'm not looking on the right shelves.
I read E Nesbit to my daughter, who was born in the late 1990s. The books were obviously dated when I read them to myself in the 1970s, but I don’t think they would be impossible to understand now?
Jacqueline Wilson has recently published her own version of “Five Children and It” but I haven’t read it, so don’t know how she’s approached the story.
I'm not surprised Nancy Drew (and the Hardy Boys?) are still in print. Easy reads, long-running series
They aren't really. What remains in print are the ends of the original series, and completely new series featuring characters with the same names.
[I imagine one of the reasons for starting entirely new series is to avoid the issue of readers wanting to read earlier books in the original series that are no longer in print]
I'd guess Tintin and Asterix have had decent runs though (and forays into the big screen)
Comments
You might enjoy the Shedunnit podcast on BBC Sounds, which is all about Golden Age crime fiction.
PD James was never really popular with other crime writers; a poll many years ago threw up Josephine Tey as 'the crime-writers' favourite crime-writer' - and she is indeed excellent.
Peter Dickinson also a strong candidate for resurrection in the crime field. He really should have been given the Diamond Dagger (for lifetime achievement). His range - children's, adolescents', adults' - is wide and always thoughtful, often with an unorthdox spiritual element, and he was a born story-teller. The Seventh Raven, The Ropemaker, Tulku, King and Joker or the more well-known Weathermonger are all good places to start. Read one and I'm pretty sure you'd want to find more.
For a longer read I always return to Trollope, the most humane of the 'big' 19C English novelists, and especially good with women characters.
a poll many years ago threw up Josephine Tey as 'the crime-writers' favourite crime-writer' - and she is indeed excellent.
Josephine Tey is excellent, but one of her books - The Franchise Affair - has aged so badly that I think it is now unreadable.
The author photo on every one of the children's books shows an old buffer you'd swear had done nothing adventurous in his life, not a man who knocked around Riga, met the Russian revolutionary leaders and married - eventually, after finally divorcing his first wife - Trotsky's secretary. He'd lived his own 'ripping yarns'.
I also read Monica Edwards when I was young. I wanted to be Tamsin, mainly because I wanted her pony. I read a lot of other pony books too, by authors who are nearly all out of print now. Patricia Leitch was still in print last time I checked, but I don't remember any others. The pony book genre has survived, but modern authors include a lot more squabbling and backbiting between the riders than I remember from the books I read. Some of the characters even have mobile phones.
Do teenagers still 'discover' D H Lawrence? I can't quite believe it.
There's a certain level of Buggins turn at work with such awards -- though afaik Pearl Buck wasn't in that category - but even that aside, from the start of the list, and restricting it to authors writing in English you have Kipling, Tagore, Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and Sinclair Lewis.
@Firenze, you suggested Gladys Mitchell to me a while back and I'd rank her with Dorothy L Sayers and better than most Agatha Christie. Especially good on druids, witchcraft or eerie moments in marshes, and her detective Mrs Bradley is shrewder (albeit more Freudian) than Marple or Poirot.
A (rambling!) PM is on its way.
I went through a pony phase with a lot of the Jill books as well as those written by the Pullein Thompsons. I read both William and Jennings books and loved those by Lois Lenski. In my primary school years the public library had very dated bookstock as did another public library I visited as a teenager, where I borrowed facsimile copies of The Magnet (very tiny print), and nearly all the Billabong books (a famous Australian series for girls).
As a child I very much enjoyed Geoffrey Trease’s historical novels but haven’t seen one of those in years.
As to the 1950s 'angry young men', I could never understand what they were so angry about.
Sad most became MOS's (miserable old scroats).
🤣 They're far too busy reading 'Twilight' - the ones who still read, that is. There are more of them than you might think.
I only read about two paragraphs of 'Women in Love' before giving up, so I am not really qualified to judge, but my father-in-law always referred to him as 'the man who made sex boring.'
I did read many DH Lawrence novels eventually.
There's a Monica Edwards Appreciation Group on Facebook that has annual meet ups in either Rye Harbour (Westling) or Thursley (for Punchbowl Farm). This year in May it's Thursley.
What makes the above authors examples of Buggins' turn?
Kipling is still the youngest ever winner. (Yeats is a possibly unique example of a writer who did their best work after winning the prize.)
AFAIK he translated some of his works (particularly the poems) into English himself.
They aren't necessarily, I was just pointing to that tendency as an explanation for why some Nobel Laureates aren't particularly well remembered now (even though a fair number are - hence the list).
I should say your father-in-law was bang on the money.
Ah, good to know! Thanks.
Me too. If you told me that most of the authors named in this thread were fictitious themselves, I wouldn't bat an eye.
The same thing happens when television shows or comedians are mentioned on the Ship; I find very little overlap, across time and across the Pond, with my own experiences.
Leonaur publishes an astonishing array of fiction from forgotten authors, or authors better known for other works. For example, they have Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger stories; and I just saw they have a volume of Kipling's science fiction stories...never knew he wrote any! They also offer a vast array of ghost/horror fiction, including multiple volumes of Algernon Blackwood stories. So, presumably, somebody is still reading these things!
I used to love the Jennings books - far better than Enid Blyton’s school stories.
There's still the Malcolm Saville Society/....
I discovered the Jalna series about 1963 & read my way through the series ( not in chronological order) until 1966. I recall my father had one paperback( “Young Renny”) at home & 🏠 discovered the rest at the public library over the next few years. Borrowing the books was tricky as they were deemed to be “adult” in those days: i needed a parent to declare to the librarian that they were OK with my reading them.
Surprised that no US posters have mentioned kids’ books by the Anericans Elizabeth Enright ( “The Saturdays” etc) or Eleanor Estes (“ Pinky Pye” etc). They were quite a presence in the libraries in my Antipodean youth: Estes wrote about WW1 America and Enright rather later ( 1930s-40s). Perhaps I’m showing my age….
I’m not American, but I still have Elizabeth Enright’s books and read them.
Here in Oz the kids’ books written by Rosemary Sutcliffe, Ian Seraillier, Geoffrey Trease and Rumer Godden were huge hits in the 1950s and 60s. By the late 70s they disappeared without trace.
It's amazing what societies there are out there. A professional contact of mine, with his wife, manages the Rupert Bear society (it may have another name. Something to do with Nutwood, possibly?) Now that has to be a very select band, surely.
Geoffrey Trease
Rosemary Sutcliffe
Rumer Godden
Eleanor Estes
Some "Brother Cadfael" books
Jean Plaidy
Mary Stewart
Anya Seton
Agatha Christie
A bit of AC Doyle, Joseph Conrad, and Jonathan Swift in university.
Heard of, but not read:
JRR Tolkien
Mazo de la Roche. (I tried reading Jalna, got bored and left.)
All other authors in this thread are Persons Unknown to me.
*Let me also forestall other readers here who may feel my reading life has been sorely lacking and that your own has been superior; may I assure you that you are mistaken and that any perceived superiority is misplaced.
Many of the childhood books I read were by "composite authors" from publishing houses: The Bobbsey Twins, Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys. The latter two occasionally pop up in televised versions, but I don't know whether any are read anymore.
The Stratemeyer Syndicate pioneered the model under which both series were originally written by multiple ghost writers publishing under a common pseudonym. That practice continues through both series -- and they've both been - essentially - "rebooted" multiple times, continuity errors and all, which enables them to be adapted to contemporary society.
I loved Elizabeth Enright. The one about the family that move house, and the main kid is Miranda, called Randy for short, and she is really unhappy about the move, but ends up liking it, because she and her siblings have adventures.
And this makes me think of another book, by another author - The Suddenly Gang. The main character, who I think is a boy, is going to write a book (I think Randy was also writing something - this is the connection in my mind) and writes 'Suddenly,' and is going to continue but doesn't need to, because the adventure happens in real life. From googling, the author is Barbara Willard.
I was thinking this. I found a recent edition of Bogwoppit (by Ursula Moray Williams) in a charity shop recently, so I imagine some kids are still reading it. I loved it as a kid, and enjoyed the reread.
Anyone remember Gwen Grant's book Private - Keep Out? About a kid in a big family in a rough neighbourhood in Nottinghamshire, who decides to write about her life. I loved that book as a kid, and the sequel, Knock and Wait, where she is ill and gets sent to some sanitarium type place. They sadly did go out of print, but the first one eventually got printed again, so I enjoyed rereading it a few years ago.
I'm not sure that the availability of online versions tells us anything about the size of demand. Unlike a physical printing, there's effectively no cost to the publisher in keeping the book available, no stocks taking up warehouse space, and no minimum print run. Similarly with 'print on demand'.
I'm not surprised Nancy Drew (and the Hardy Boys?) are still in print. Easy reads, long-running series, etc. I haven't noticed them in our local children's libraries, but maybe I'm not looking on the right shelves.
Jacqueline Wilson has recently published her own version of “Five Children and It” but I haven’t read it, so don’t know how she’s approached the story.
They aren't really. What remains in print are the ends of the original series, and completely new series featuring characters with the same names.
[I imagine one of the reasons for starting entirely new series is to avoid the issue of readers wanting to read earlier books in the original series that are no longer in print]
I'd guess Tintin and Asterix have had decent runs though (and forays into the big screen)