What would you pluck from obscurity?
As the autumn publishing season swings into action with cries of hype and excitement, it's sobering to realise that, actually, most books aren't bestsellers, don't appear on Richard and Judy, and, sadly, do not sell in the quantities their authors and publishers hope for. The story of literature as a whole is one of failure, neglect and near-oblivion.
But, as every reader knows, we all have our favourites - obscure, half-forgotten, probably out-of-print titles - that we have read at some crucial moment in our lives and to which we have responded in a highly personal way. The Observer decided to unearth some of these buried literary gems by asking 50 writers to tell us about their favourite underrated novel.
We fired off emails to our contributors, from Philip Pullman, Will Self and Jilly Cooper to John Mortimer, MJ Hyland and Lynne Truss, asking for nominations.
The results are so fascinating that they have been turned into a feature that will appear on the cover of the Observer review. And one of the really pleasing consequences of this informal poll is that no fewer than three writers have chosen the works of English novelist Elizabeth Taylor, specifically her masterpiece Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont. Maybe this will encourage Taylor's publishers, Virago, to issue a collected works. If that happens, several Observer critics will raise a silent cheer.
