1. Whose novel was rejected as “Overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian...I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.”
The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
The story of O Pauline Réage
Lolita by Nabokov
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
2 Which novelist in 1996 received a rejection letter from the Detroit pizza chain Little Caesars after accidentally attempting five times to submit their first novel to it.
JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Graham Swift, Last Orders
Giles Foden, The Last King of Scotland.
3. “The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.” Who was the girl?
Jane Eyre
Anne Frank
Alice in Wonderland
Heidi
4. John Updike’s Rabbit Run was turned down for which literary failure?
“Not once does does a character get the hiccups”
“The American public is not ready for fellatio in fiction”
“Lacks the psychological sophistication of Watership Down”
“The present tense is death to the novel”
5. “Could not the Captain be struggling with a depravity towards young, perhaps voluptuous, maidens?” Which literary seadog was so dismissed?
Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick
Captain Von Trapp in The Story of the Trapp Family Singers
Captain Pugwash
Captain Forrester in Willa Cather’s A Lost Lady
6. Which author was told was told “For your own sake, do not publish this book.”
DH Lawrence for Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Thomas Hardy for Jude the Obscure
EM Forster for Maurice
Erica Jong for Fear of Flying
7. Which publisher rejected George Orwell’s Animal Farm with the words: “Your pigs are far more intelligent than the other animals, and therefore the best qualified to run the farm—in fact, there couldn’t have been an Animal Farm at all without them: so that what was needed, (someone might argue), was not more communism but more public-spirited pigs.”
TS Eliot
Allen Lane
John Murray
Jonathan Cape
8. “We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.” Which novel was rejected with those words:
Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory
Stephen King’s Carrie.
HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds
Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
9 British mystery writer John Creasy is commonly believed to hold the record for publishers’ rejections. How many did he - and his 27 pseudonyms - receive
624
281
743
101
10. “Miss Play has a way with words and a sharp eye for unusual and vivid detail. But maybe now that this book is out of her system she will use her talent more effectively next time.” Who was Miss Play?
Sylvia Plath
Amanda Platell
Jean Plaidy
Nigel Planer
- This quiz was amended on 16 October 2015 as it had given an incorrect answer as the right answer to Question 8.
