The challenge for the completist gets ever harder. Ticked off War and Peace? How about Tolstoy's Hadji Murat? Enjoyed The Portrait of a Lady? What about Henry James's more obscure In the Cage? It's only a matter of time before someone stops me when I mention Lady Chatterley's Lover to ask if I mean the recently reprinted Second Lady Chatterley's Lover (the 1927 version).
Even one-book wonders, in classic terms, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, have had their oeuvre raided. Yes, that's right - the great woman's Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark was reissued about four years ago, by Centaur Press. ("The Swedes pique themselves on their politeness; but far from being the polish of a cultivated mind, it consists merely of tiresome forms and ceremonies," etc.)
Perhaps this is one tangible result of the work of literature departments around the world. Where once there was an exclusive canon, we now have a profusion of books from both contemporary writers and the classics. But I'm suspicious. This isn't a question of tireless editors seeking out forgotten gems among the dross of history – it's all about Names.
Take a closer look at this recent publishing wheeze, and it soon reduces to digging out the obscurer works of not-so-obscure writers. If you listen carefully you'll notice something that sounds distinctly like the bottom of a barrel being scraped, but the key to it all is that a Name can be marketed. Take a look at some recent covers from Hesperus. Each one makes it tastefully but absolutely clear that their authors are familiar to you - Bronte, Dickens, Shelley - even though the titles are not. It's only a short step in cover design to a volume with JONATHAN SWIFT emblazoned in gold across the front. TOM CLANCY, eat your heart out.
Little commercial courage is required to publish everything Jack Kerouac ever wrote as a "modern classic", but it's harder to give Jane Collier's An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting another chance. (For this point to stand up, you need to say "Jane who?" some time around now.) Without succumbing to obscurity for obscurity's sake, I think the novels of Robert Bage should be out there, in WH Smith, discovering new readers. And so should the plays of Hannah Cowley. And the curious works of Brigid Brophy. But how would those names look embossed in gold?
