Hmm, this is fine, but I wish it could've been actually good.
As the brief states, Fowler "profiles" 99 authors who have been quote-unquote forgotten, ranging from the deserved to the decidedly undeserved. In and of itself, that's a great idea, and this book certainly is a useful resource for those of us who live in the margins and niches of literary history. Fowler has dug into some unusual areas, especially in the short essays on broader themes that break up the biographical entries. So he can be acclaimed for that. At the same time, there are two grievances to note:

First - and Fowler is upfront about this - there's a heavy emphasis on the deservedly forgotten. Many of these writers are, as another reviewer has stated, "nutjobs" of various kinds. So this leans toward being an amusing insight into literary footnotes rather than a guide for even heavy-duty readers.

Second, by contrast, when Fowler does profile a worthy writer, his profiles are too short and frankly too vague to do much good. Like many readers, I jumped immediately to the authors I recognised, especially my beloved [a:Barbara Pym|104015|Barbara Pym|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1231080935p2/104015.jpg]. (Fowler seems to be stating not that she's forgotten now, but rather acknowledging the "wilderness years" of the 1960s and 1970s when she was so.) The two short pages allotted to Pym cover the absolute basics of her biography with barely a paragraph on her writing itself - he fails to track the distinct literary phases of her career, to provide any quotes from the text, to mention the thriving Pym culture of the last decade, to provide a single amusing anecdote about the author, or to elaborate on the humour, deft character touches and cultural references for which her fans hold her in high regard! Indeed, there's no evidence from this entry that Fowler has actually read a Pym novel. That in itself is not an offense - this isn't his PhD - but there is no attempt to provide reasons why readers should seek out Pym, or most of the other 98 authors profiled herein. This makes the book seem like rather a waste, from my vantage point. Adding another 2 pages to each entry, or even reducing the font, would have made all the difference. Every keen reader should have been able to pick 30 or 40 of these to add to their to-read list; instead, I suspect most keen readers will pick 4 or 5.

Ho hum. ( )

Forgotten by Many but not Everyone
Review of the riverrun Kindle eBook edition (October 5, 2017) published simultaneously with the riverrun hardcover original.

It was a delight to read these short tales of 99 "forgotten" authors, a dozen or so of which I had read and enjoyed previously. My thanks to GR friends Darya Silman's and Liam Ostermann's reviews which made for this discovery. This was a treasure trove of trivia for fans of books about books, books about authors and books adapted for other media.

Even if I had not read the specific novels, I was surprised at the number of authors and books which I knew from their movie, television, or stage adaptations. Many of the authors featured had their stories adapted by Alfred Hitchcock for instance.

I've copy/pasted the Table of Contents into the Trivia section below so you can discover how many of these "forgotten" authors you may actually know. I've only built in links for the ones that I know from my own previous and current reading. Gladys Mitchell and her Mrs. Bradley novels were the first of my "unknowns" that I decided to investigate.

The author Christopher Fowler (1953-2023) was himself the author of 50 books, primarily the 18 novels of the Bryant & May (2003-2021) series of crime thrillers.

Trivia and Some Links
The following is the Table of Contents for the book with the addition of authors being numbered 1 to 99 and the interchapter essays I to XI.
Why Are Good Authors Forgotten?
1 Margery Allingham (1904-1966) English author who wrote the Albert Campion series of 21 detective novels 1929 to 1970. Also some collections of Albert Campion short stories.
2 Virginia Andrews (1923-1986), better known as V.C. Andrews, American author best known for Flowers in the Attic (1979), but all books published after 1988 were ghost-written by Andrew Neiderman.
3 Charlotte Armstrong
4 Frank Baker
5 R. M. Ballantyne
6 Alexander Baron
7 Peter Barnes
8 Lesley Blanch
9 Kyril Bonfiglioli
I. The Forgotten Disney Connection
10 Ernest Bornemann
11 Pierre Boulle (1912-1994) French author who wrote the novels The Bridge Over the River Kwai (1952) and Planet of the Apes (1963), best known now for their movie adaptations.
12 Mary Elizabeth Braddon
13 Caryl Brahms
14 Pamela Branch
15 Brigid Brophy
16 Thomas Burke
17 Dino Buzzati
18 Patricia Carlon
19 Barbara Comyns Carr
II The Forgotten (pre-Tarantino) Pulp Fiction
20 John Dickson Carr (1906-1977), who also used the pseudonyms Carter Dickson & Carr Dickson, American born, but later English author, considered the master of the "locked room" mystery, especially for The Three Coffins (1935) and the rest of the Dr. Gideon Fell series of 23 novels 1932-1967.
21 Leslie Charteris (1907-1993), Chinese-English author, known for The Saint (1928-1983) series of 51 novels, probably best known through the TV-adaptations starring Roger Moore.
22 John Christopher
23 John Collier
24 Norman Collins
25 Richard Condon (1915-1996), American author, best known through the movie adaptations of The Manchurian Candidate (1959) & Prizzi's Honor (1982). There are actually 4 books in the Prizzi family saga (1982-1994).
26 Edmund Crispin
27 E. M. Delafield
28 Patrick Dennis
29 Raymond Durgnat
III The Forgotten Rivals of Holmes, Bond and Miss Marple
30 Rosalind Erskine
31 Dr Christopher Evans
32 Jack Finney
33 Ronald Firbank
34 Peter Fleming, did you know that the brother of James Bond creator Ian Fleming was a travel writer and novelist?
35 Lucille Fletcher
36 R. Austin Freeman
37 Michael Green
38 Peter Van Greenaway
IV The Forgotten Books of Charles Dickens
39 Robert Van Gulik
40 Thomas Guthrie
41 Charles Hamilton
42 James Hanley
43 Sven Hassel
44 A. P. Herbert
45 Georgette Heyer
46 Eleanor Hibbert
47 Harry Hodge
48 Sheila Hodgetts
V The Forgotten Queens of Suspense
49 Polly Hope
50 Richard Hughes
51 Graham Joyce
52 Robert Klane
53 Thomas Nigel Kneale
54 Ronald Knox (1888-1957), English priest and author, best known for his Ten Rules for Detective Fiction.
55 Gavin Lambert
56 George Langelaan
VI The Forgotten Nonsense Writers
57 Noel Langley
58 Marghanita Laski
59 Michael McDowell
60 John McGlashan
61 Julian Maclaren-Ross
62 Richard Marsh
63 Arthur Mee
64 Gustav Meyer
65 Margaret Millar
VII The Forgotten Booker Authors
66 Clifford Mills
67 Gladys Mitchell (1901-1983) English author of the 66 books of the Mrs. Bradley (1929-1984) series of crime mysteries.
68 Brian Moore (1921-1999), Northern Irish, later Canadian & American author whom I know from his novel Black Robe (1985) and its later Canadian movie adaptation (1991) for which he wrote the screenplay.
69 J. B. Morton
70 Peter Nichols
71 Bill Naughton
72 Emma Orczy, best known as Emmuska Orczy aka Baroness Orczy (1865-1947), the creator of the Scarlet Pimpernel (1905-1940) series of novels and also the early female detective Lady Molly Of Scotland Yard (1910).
73 Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett
74 Thomas Love Peacock
VIII Forgotten For Writing Too Little – and Too Much
75 Joyce Porter
76 David Pownall
77 Philippa Pullar
78 Barbara Pym
79 Richard Quittenton
80 T. Lobsang Rampa
81 Simon Raven
82 Maurice Richardson
IX The Rediscovered Forgotten Authors
83 Arnold Ridley
84 Tom Robbins (1932-), American author, best known for the 1993 movie adaptation of his novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976).
85 Cynthia Propper Seton
86 Idries Shah
87 Richard Shaver
88 Matthew Phipps Shiel
89 Peter Tinniswood
X Lost In Translation: The Forgotten World Authors
90 Thomas Tryon
91 Arthur Upfield
92 Edgar Wallace (1875-1932), very prolific English author, but probably now best known as the original story writer for the movie King Kong (1933).
93 James Redding Ware
94 Keith Waterhouse
95 Winifred Watson
XI The Justly Forgotten Authors
96 Dennis Wheatley (1897-1977), English thriller and occult writer. I haven't read very much of Wheatley, but I remembered his name from the anthology The Satanists (1971) which I read in my pre-GR days.
97 T. H. White (1906-1964), English author especially known for the The Once and Future King: Camelot (1967 movie tie-in edition of the 1958 original). This is actually a series of 4 or 5 shorter novels, each originally published separately in the Once and Future King (1938-1977) series.
98 Kathleen Winsor
99 Cornell Woolrich
The Last Word
Acknowledgements ( )

Thousands upon thousands of books are published each year, and most of them will never find their way to a shelf at a large Barnes & Noble store or even a large library. And most of the new books that do manage to earn a spot in bookstores and libraries soon enough disappear for good. Merchants and librarians must find places to put all those newer books that are published.

On my last stop at a Barnes & Noble I made a rough count of the books on four shelves of fiction. There were roughly 30 different novels on each shelf, or about 120 books total. I noticed books by just nine authors whom I know to be deceased. These included the likes of Jacqueline Susann, Jonathan Swift, Williams Styron, Walter Tevis and Leo Tolstoy. So what happened to all the books by writers both living and dead who once would have been on these same shelves?

Christopher Fowler, author of the Bryant & May series of British mysteries, wondered the same thing and decided to do something about it. The result is “The Book of Forgotten Authors” (2017).

Fowler writes brief essays about 100 writers, mostly novelists, who were once somebody in the literary world. Today few people remember them. I am old enough to remember several, including Charlotte Armstrong, Brian Moore, John Christopher, John Collier, Winifred Watson, Pierre Boulle and a longtime favorite, Jack Finney. Most of the 100 I had never heard of, let alone read. Being British, Fowler focuses mainly on British writers, many of them fairly obscure even at the peak of their careers.

Some names we may not recognize, but we know the books they wrote or the movies based on their books. Boulle, for example, wrote both “The Bridge Over the River Kwai” and “Planet of the Apes,” yet his novels were never as popular as the movies based on them.

Fowler cheats a bit, including authors who are not forgotten at all. Several of the authors he mentions still have at least some of their books in print. Publishers wouldn't print books nobody will buy.

One of the lessons of Fowler's intriguing book is that all but a few of authors writing today will also be forgotten within a very few years. Fowler, in fact, lists himself as 101 on his list: "Fowler is still alive and one day plans to realize his ambition to become a Forgotten Author himself." ( )

The 4th star I’m giving this book, a collection of 99 authors who have been ‘forgotten’, is a tip of the hat bump-up for witty dialog that made me chuckle throughout the book, and for giving me a handful of author names worth researching for future used bookstore treasures.

Otherwise, this is a collection of 99 authors who have been ‘forgotten’, along with a half-dozen or so essays that discuss additional forgotten authors, that is made a bit average through sheer volume. It’s both a book that doesn’t lend itself to reading through, nor dipping into here and there. It’s best read in chunks, I guess, but then one is apt to get to authors who write – or wrote – in areas of no interest to the reader, and suddenly there’s skimming and skipping.

There are a number of authors Fowler includes that I’ve not only heard of and/or read, but whose titles are actively sitting on my shelves: Allington, Wheatley, Orczy, Mitchell and Crispin, among others. This made me feel oddly better about myself in a way I probably shouldn’t admit to, but there it is; suddenly my wall of cozies seem a tiny bit elevated by sharing company with these names who have been deemed worth remembering. ( )

I don't think there could be a finer guide than Christopher Fowler to the back catalogues and backstories of ninety-nine authors who, once hugely popular, have all but vanished from our bookshelves. The stories of the ninety-nine authors are interspersed with Fowler's twelve essays discussing topics such as the now-forgotten novels Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock brought to the screen, contemporary rivals of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie who did not stand the test of time, and women authors who introduced psychological suspense long before it became a mainstay on the bestseller lists.

Fowler kept me entertained throughout Forgotten Authors with his humor (describing actor Charlton Heston as a "heroic plank" or "Klane's prose is as fast and blunt as a chucked brick") as well as telling readers how he went about digging up information about these authors. I think my favorite is Fowler's chapter about Polly Hope, "Where the Rainbow Ends."

It was always gratifying when he chose a forgotten author that I'd already discovered and enjoyed, such as Australian Patricia Carlon and time traveler extraordinaire Jack Finney, or when he praised a favorite book like Consuming Passions. Of course, the danger in reading a book like this is finding a long list of authors and books you want to read, but isn't that why you pick it up in the first place? No reader worth their salt wants to feel as though they're missing out on literary gems, do they? Did I finish Forgotten Authors with a list of my own? Of course I did, and I'm working on finding copies of every single title on my (rather short) list.

Even though you might not want to read Fowler's book for fear you'll add too many books to your already staggering list, I recommend you do so anyway. Forgotten Authors is filled to bursting with fascinating facts and stories that will add to your knowledge of popular literature. It's fascinating and fun, two things that I always love to experience when I read a book-- and don't you dare miss "A Note on the Author" at the end! ( )