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The Uncommon Reader: A Life of Edward Garnett, Mentor and Editor of Literary Genius
"I know you've made me." Some of the most illustrious writers of the early twentieth century would recognize and endorse the sentiments contained in Joseph Conrad's letter to his literary mentor and friend Edward Garnett, the renowned publisher, critiic, and editor. Over a career spanning half a century, from 1887 to 1937, Garnett wheedled, coaxed, and cajoled great books into being. Aside from having exquisite taste, he was also considered a mentor by many writers, including Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, Edward Thomas, John Galsworthy, Henry Green, and T. E. Lawrence.
To be mentored by Garnett was to enter into a relationship as much personal as it was professional. In this fascinating biography, Helen Smith charts his relationships with legendary authors, from his early days with Joseph Conrad and his battles with D. H. Lawrence to his nurturing of a later generation of talent. He was instrumental in bringing Russian literature to a British readership and enthusiastically advocated the work of American and Australian authors, including Stephen Crane, Sarah Orne Jewett, Robert Frost, and Sherwood Anderson.
The novelist Ford Madox Ford once declared that when in the States he never lectured or went to a university or a literary party without someone asking, "What about Garnett! What sort of a fellow is he?"' Smith's biography of Edward Garnett provides a fascinating response to that question.
Drawing on extensive archive material, some of which is previously unpublished, The Uncommon Reader presents an intimate portrait of the life and world of a man who did much to shape the literary landscape of early twentieth-century Britain and beyond.
To be mentored by Garnett was to enter into a relationship as much personal as it was professional. In this fascinating biography, Helen Smith charts his relationships with legendary authors, from his early days with Joseph Conrad and his battles with D. H. Lawrence to his nurturing of a later generation of talent. He was instrumental in bringing Russian literature to a British readership and enthusiastically advocated the work of American and Australian authors, including Stephen Crane, Sarah Orne Jewett, Robert Frost, and Sherwood Anderson.
The novelist Ford Madox Ford once declared that when in the States he never lectured or went to a university or a literary party without someone asking, "What about Garnett! What sort of a fellow is he?"' Smith's biography of Edward Garnett provides a fascinating response to that question.
Drawing on extensive archive material, some of which is previously unpublished, The Uncommon Reader presents an intimate portrait of the life and world of a man who did much to shape the literary landscape of early twentieth-century Britain and beyond.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2017
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December 27, 2017
In the 19th century, writers sent their manuscripts directly to publishing houses like Unwin or Jonathan Cape. “Readers,” who were often themselves struggling writers, were employed to sift through other writers’ manuscripts (today called the slush pile) in search of treasures that would make their publishers rich. While the slush pile more or less still exists today, the steps to publication have multiplied, there being far more people in between the writer and publisher (unless the writer self-publishes).
There were some freedoms involved in being a reader: the reader didn’t have to show up at the office every day. He might collect manuscripts once a week or so and take them home to read on his own schedule. If paid readers arranged their time well, they could get their own writing done and possibly published by the house he read for.
As a reader, Edward Garnett proved to be a powerful connection for writers whom he believed had the requisite storytelling and literary skills, and he would move mountains to get them published. He had a keen sense of who showed promise and usually he was right. In addition, he was a gifted editor and a loyal friend to the writers he championed. He is credited with having discovered Joseph Conrad, T.E. Lawrence, and D.H. Lawrence, among many others. He was a champion of female writers, like Barbara Baynton of Australia.
Garnett came from a talented family. He was the son of Richard Garnett, who made a career in the manuscripts department of the British Library. The Garnetts' careers ranged from a paper mill owned and operated by a great grandfather, to printing, scholarship and language study. They consorted with scholarly and artistic people. As superintendent of the British Museum Reading Room, Richard Garnett Jr was friends with the likes of Samuel Butler and William Michael Rossetti. Young Edward had for playmates Ford Maddox Ford (né “Hueffer”) and Rossetti’s daughters. (Over time, there would be a falling out between the Hueffers and the Garnetts).
While the power to recommend a writer for publication may sound significant to aspiring authors, the job of reader was not well paid and the work was grueling. Edward Garnett, who read for several different publishers during his career, once estimated that he read and wrote reports on 700 books a year. Rejections were more numerous than acceptances, and they ranged from being delivered “with sweetness” to rejections that “advise[d] burial.” One can imagine a publisher’s reader—people like Edward Garnet or the novelist Frank Swinnerton, who read for Chatto & Windus--hoped thereby to reduce the chances of reading pure gibberish.
Because Garnett’s careful eye and taste found talented writers and helped make their works famous (sometimes telling the writer what project to focus on, what to cut out and what to expand) Garnett has a claim to fame himself, which Smith has carefully helped cement by analyzing the roots of his character and ethics. She demonstrates that his father Richard passed on a “scorn for worldly success” to all his children. Indeed, Ford apparently revered Richard “as a near mystical fount of learning.” Garnett Sr. was well known and popular, attracting “literary ladies” including the children’s author Arabella Buckley. Smith does an admirable job of sketching the London literary milieu that framed Garnett’s childhood and youth.
Edward Garnett’s first job as reader, when around 20 or younger, was with the publisher T. Fisher Unwin, son by a second marriage of a printer. Poor Unwin seems to have possessed the personality of a drenched stick in a bog. Unwin as well as Heinemann, John Lane, Hutchinson and Dent all created publishing houses during the latter part of the 19th century. For all Unwin’s boorishness, he was kind enough to publish Garnett’s stagnant novel The Paradox Club. Unwin also put out Garnett’s Light and Shadow, which Helen Smith writes “lacks any light and shadow in its execution.” H.G. Wells was kind enough to read that latter novel in 1903 and deliver a gentler critique to Garnett.
Yet this awkward novelist was, in his son's words, like "a cat with kittens" when he found talent. Money did not sway him. For instance, Garnett was taken with the “dreamy, otherworldly” William Butler Yeats, who was so poor that he had to “black-up his heels so as to cover up the holes in his stockings . . .” and he convinced Unwin to accept Yeat’s novella John Sherman.
Smith tells the story of Edward Garnet’s relationship with his older wife Constance, and while it is not perhaps as interesting from a literary perspective as the one he later builds with Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, it exposes the tastes and ideas of serious English language readers as well as the influences coming from outside England. Constance’s home was in Whitechapel, where a density in Russian immigrants reflected her future work in translation. As a couple, they made do with Edward’s job reading and Constance’s as a librarian.
Constance was bit by the bug of Russian exotic influence in the form of Volkhovsky, a Russian political refugee who taught her Russian and who wrote for the Anglo-Russian Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, founded by Sergei Stepniak, to which Society Unwin belonged. As a point of interest apart from literature, Constance later fell in love with Stepniak, but Edward fell under his spell too. Their marriage functioned for propriety and the sake of their son. Garnett would be later consoled by Ellen Maurice Heath.
Ellen, called Nellie, is noted to have studied under the very weird Walter Sickert, about whom Patricia Cornwell wrote a book arguing that he was the London murderer Jack the Ripper. Readers who love to steep themselves in the dank streets of 19th century London will love the way the threads of Edward Garnett’s life illuminate London’s literary social consciousness.
As a dramatic example, when Constance’s eldest brother Arthur Black killed his wife Jesse and his son Leslie, aged fifteen months, and then killed himself, Joseph Conrad reacted with ill-humored jealousy and burst out: “Nothing of the kind has ever come my way! I have spent half my life knocking about in ships, only getting ashore between voyages! I know nothing, nothing! Except from the outside.”
Garnett’s wife is remembered as a noted translator but her obsession with Stepniak helped drive Edward Garnett to a nervous breakdown. Probably his own desire to gain literary note on a par with those writers whose names he helped gain prestige may have increased his angst. J.M. Dent, for whom Garnett would also eventually read, published Garnett’s book of prose poems titled An Imagined World.
Garnett introduced Dent to the writer Ernest Rhys, who became first editor of the Everyman series. Rhys has written that Garnett wanted to “find an effective literary form in which to represent individual consciousness, but he lacked the creative talent of the likes of Joseph Conrad, Virgina Woolf or Ford Madox Ford. . .”
Be that as it may, Edward seemed to understand his reasons for liking new writers. He thought that Henry Lawson and Robert Louis Stevenson brought “remote corners of the planet to attention” thus adding “to the old world’s realization of its new life.” He also kept his eye on writers who might write about life in some part of the British Isles that was previously unexplored.
Smith has missed very little. She notes that works “submitted by literary agencies rather than individuals bore the brunt of his wrath.” Literary agents began surfacing in the early 20th century and were not held in high regard by publishers. Agents then made the mistakes that writers do now—not knowing what kind of material might be of interest, for instance. They submitted work that did not fit Duckworth’s list, another publisher for whom Garnett read. Garnett convinced Duckworth to publish El Ombu, by W. H. Hudson, a writer who outsold Conrad in his own lifetime.
Among Garnett’s amazing discoveries was T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. T.E. Lawrence was none other than Lawrence of Arabia. Garnett was drawn to people who were, like he himself, a mass of contradictions—and T.E. Lawrence was definitely that.
I did come out of this book wondering how, if Garnett had discovered T.E. Lawrence, Conrad and D.H.Lawrence (for whom Garnett also edited and gave notes on avoiding labored metaphors and too many adjectives), he never seems to have crossed paths or made any comments on Marmaduke Pickthall, a novelist who spoke fluent Arabic and whose works were admired by H.G. Wells, D.H. Lawrence and E. M.Forster (and are now published by Beacon Books) is best remembered today as an eminent translator of the meaning of the holy Quran.
Helen Smith is to be lauded for her assiduous research and brilliant assessment of a pivotal figure in British publishing history. There is much here to intoxicate book lovers. #Farrar, Straus and Giroux
There were some freedoms involved in being a reader: the reader didn’t have to show up at the office every day. He might collect manuscripts once a week or so and take them home to read on his own schedule. If paid readers arranged their time well, they could get their own writing done and possibly published by the house he read for.
As a reader, Edward Garnett proved to be a powerful connection for writers whom he believed had the requisite storytelling and literary skills, and he would move mountains to get them published. He had a keen sense of who showed promise and usually he was right. In addition, he was a gifted editor and a loyal friend to the writers he championed. He is credited with having discovered Joseph Conrad, T.E. Lawrence, and D.H. Lawrence, among many others. He was a champion of female writers, like Barbara Baynton of Australia.
Garnett came from a talented family. He was the son of Richard Garnett, who made a career in the manuscripts department of the British Library. The Garnetts' careers ranged from a paper mill owned and operated by a great grandfather, to printing, scholarship and language study. They consorted with scholarly and artistic people. As superintendent of the British Museum Reading Room, Richard Garnett Jr was friends with the likes of Samuel Butler and William Michael Rossetti. Young Edward had for playmates Ford Maddox Ford (né “Hueffer”) and Rossetti’s daughters. (Over time, there would be a falling out between the Hueffers and the Garnetts).
While the power to recommend a writer for publication may sound significant to aspiring authors, the job of reader was not well paid and the work was grueling. Edward Garnett, who read for several different publishers during his career, once estimated that he read and wrote reports on 700 books a year. Rejections were more numerous than acceptances, and they ranged from being delivered “with sweetness” to rejections that “advise[d] burial.” One can imagine a publisher’s reader—people like Edward Garnet or the novelist Frank Swinnerton, who read for Chatto & Windus--hoped thereby to reduce the chances of reading pure gibberish.
Because Garnett’s careful eye and taste found talented writers and helped make their works famous (sometimes telling the writer what project to focus on, what to cut out and what to expand) Garnett has a claim to fame himself, which Smith has carefully helped cement by analyzing the roots of his character and ethics. She demonstrates that his father Richard passed on a “scorn for worldly success” to all his children. Indeed, Ford apparently revered Richard “as a near mystical fount of learning.” Garnett Sr. was well known and popular, attracting “literary ladies” including the children’s author Arabella Buckley. Smith does an admirable job of sketching the London literary milieu that framed Garnett’s childhood and youth.
Edward Garnett’s first job as reader, when around 20 or younger, was with the publisher T. Fisher Unwin, son by a second marriage of a printer. Poor Unwin seems to have possessed the personality of a drenched stick in a bog. Unwin as well as Heinemann, John Lane, Hutchinson and Dent all created publishing houses during the latter part of the 19th century. For all Unwin’s boorishness, he was kind enough to publish Garnett’s stagnant novel The Paradox Club. Unwin also put out Garnett’s Light and Shadow, which Helen Smith writes “lacks any light and shadow in its execution.” H.G. Wells was kind enough to read that latter novel in 1903 and deliver a gentler critique to Garnett.
Yet this awkward novelist was, in his son's words, like "a cat with kittens" when he found talent. Money did not sway him. For instance, Garnett was taken with the “dreamy, otherworldly” William Butler Yeats, who was so poor that he had to “black-up his heels so as to cover up the holes in his stockings . . .” and he convinced Unwin to accept Yeat’s novella John Sherman.
Smith tells the story of Edward Garnet’s relationship with his older wife Constance, and while it is not perhaps as interesting from a literary perspective as the one he later builds with Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, it exposes the tastes and ideas of serious English language readers as well as the influences coming from outside England. Constance’s home was in Whitechapel, where a density in Russian immigrants reflected her future work in translation. As a couple, they made do with Edward’s job reading and Constance’s as a librarian.
Constance was bit by the bug of Russian exotic influence in the form of Volkhovsky, a Russian political refugee who taught her Russian and who wrote for the Anglo-Russian Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, founded by Sergei Stepniak, to which Society Unwin belonged. As a point of interest apart from literature, Constance later fell in love with Stepniak, but Edward fell under his spell too. Their marriage functioned for propriety and the sake of their son. Garnett would be later consoled by Ellen Maurice Heath.
Ellen, called Nellie, is noted to have studied under the very weird Walter Sickert, about whom Patricia Cornwell wrote a book arguing that he was the London murderer Jack the Ripper. Readers who love to steep themselves in the dank streets of 19th century London will love the way the threads of Edward Garnett’s life illuminate London’s literary social consciousness.
As a dramatic example, when Constance’s eldest brother Arthur Black killed his wife Jesse and his son Leslie, aged fifteen months, and then killed himself, Joseph Conrad reacted with ill-humored jealousy and burst out: “Nothing of the kind has ever come my way! I have spent half my life knocking about in ships, only getting ashore between voyages! I know nothing, nothing! Except from the outside.”
Garnett’s wife is remembered as a noted translator but her obsession with Stepniak helped drive Edward Garnett to a nervous breakdown. Probably his own desire to gain literary note on a par with those writers whose names he helped gain prestige may have increased his angst. J.M. Dent, for whom Garnett would also eventually read, published Garnett’s book of prose poems titled An Imagined World.
Garnett introduced Dent to the writer Ernest Rhys, who became first editor of the Everyman series. Rhys has written that Garnett wanted to “find an effective literary form in which to represent individual consciousness, but he lacked the creative talent of the likes of Joseph Conrad, Virgina Woolf or Ford Madox Ford. . .”
Be that as it may, Edward seemed to understand his reasons for liking new writers. He thought that Henry Lawson and Robert Louis Stevenson brought “remote corners of the planet to attention” thus adding “to the old world’s realization of its new life.” He also kept his eye on writers who might write about life in some part of the British Isles that was previously unexplored.
Smith has missed very little. She notes that works “submitted by literary agencies rather than individuals bore the brunt of his wrath.” Literary agents began surfacing in the early 20th century and were not held in high regard by publishers. Agents then made the mistakes that writers do now—not knowing what kind of material might be of interest, for instance. They submitted work that did not fit Duckworth’s list, another publisher for whom Garnett read. Garnett convinced Duckworth to publish El Ombu, by W. H. Hudson, a writer who outsold Conrad in his own lifetime.
Among Garnett’s amazing discoveries was T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. T.E. Lawrence was none other than Lawrence of Arabia. Garnett was drawn to people who were, like he himself, a mass of contradictions—and T.E. Lawrence was definitely that.
I did come out of this book wondering how, if Garnett had discovered T.E. Lawrence, Conrad and D.H.Lawrence (for whom Garnett also edited and gave notes on avoiding labored metaphors and too many adjectives), he never seems to have crossed paths or made any comments on Marmaduke Pickthall, a novelist who spoke fluent Arabic and whose works were admired by H.G. Wells, D.H. Lawrence and E. M.Forster (and are now published by Beacon Books) is best remembered today as an eminent translator of the meaning of the holy Quran.
Helen Smith is to be lauded for her assiduous research and brilliant assessment of a pivotal figure in British publishing history. There is much here to intoxicate book lovers. #Farrar, Straus and Giroux
February 29, 2020
Fascinating biography of the man who pulled Joseph Conrad out the slush pile and took on DH Lawrence when no one else would. Garnett was our Maxwell Perkins. Read on and see why.
November 12, 2023
In the 19th century, writers sent their manuscripts directly to publishing houses like Unwin or Jonathan Cape. “Readers,” who were often themselves struggling writers, were employed to sift through other writers’ manuscripts (today called the slush pile) in search of treasures that would make their publishers rich. While the slush pile more or less still exists today, the steps to publication have multiplied, there being far more people in between the writer and publisher (unless the writer self-publishes).
There were some freedoms involved in being a reader: the reader didn’t have to show up at the office every day. He might collect manuscripts once a week or so and take them home to read on his own schedule. If paid readers arranged their time well, they could get their own writing done and possibly be published by the house they read for.
As a reader, Edward Garnett proved to be a powerful connection for writers whom he believed had the requisite storytelling and literary skills, and he would move mountains to get them published. He had a keen sense of who showed promise and usually he was right. In addition, he was a gifted editor and a loyal friend to the writers he championed. He is credited with having discovered Joseph Conrad, T.E. Lawrence, and D.H. Lawrence, among many others. He was a champion of female writers, like Barbara Baynton of Australia.
Garnett came from a talented family. He was the son of Richard Garnett, who made a career in the manuscripts department of the British Library. The Garnetts' careers ranged from a paper mill owned and operated by a great grandfather, to printing, scholarship and language study. They consorted with scholarly and artistic people whom Richard Garnett met as Superintendent of the British Museum Reading Room, including Samuel Butler and William Michael Rossetti. Young Edward had for playmates Ford Maddox Ford (né “Hueffer”) and Rossetti’s daughters. (Over time, there would be a falling out between the Hueffers and the Garnetts).
While the power to recommend a writer for publication may sound significant to aspiring authors, the job of reader was not well paid and the work was grueling. Edward Garnett, who read for several different publishers during his career, once estimated that he read and wrote reports on 700 books a year. Rejections were more numerous than acceptances, and they ranged from being delivered “with sweetness” to rejections that “advise[d] burial.” The process was/is important, for a publisher’s reader—someone like Edward Garnet or the novelist Frank Swinnerton, who read for Chatto & Windus--hoped thereby to reduce the chances of the public reading pure gibberish.
Because Garnett’s careful eye and taste found talented writers and helped make their works famous (sometimes telling the writer what project to focus on, what to cut out and what to expand) Garnett has a claim to fame himself, which Smith has carefully helped cement by analyzing the roots of his character and ethics. She demonstrates that his father Richard passed on a “scorn for worldly success” to all his children. Indeed, Ford apparently revered Richard Garnett“as a near mystical fount of learning.” Garnett Sr. was well known and popular, attracting “literary ladies” including the children’s author Arabella Buckley. Smith does an admirable job of sketching the London literary milieu that framed Garnett’s childhood and youth.
Edward Garnett’s first job as reader, when around 20 or younger, was with the publisher T. Fisher Unwin, himself the son by a second marriage of a printer. Poor Unwin seems to have possessed the personality of a drenched stick in a bog. Unwin along with Heinemann, John Lane, Hutchinson and Dent all created publishing houses during the latter part of the 19th century. For all Unwin’s boorishness, he was kind enough to publish Garnett’s stagnant novel The Paradox Club. Unwin also put out Garnett’s Light and Shadow, which Helen Smith writes, “lacks any light and shadow in its execution.” H.G. Wells was kind enough to read that latter novel in 1903 and deliver a gentler critique to Garnett.
Yet this awkward novelist was, in his son's words, like "a cat with kittens" when he found talent. Money did not sway him. For instance, Garnett was taken with the “dreamy, otherworldly” William Butler Yeats, who was so poor that he had to “black-up his heels so as to cover up the holes in his stockings . . .” and he convinced Unwin to accept Yeat’s novella John Sherman.
Smith tells the story of Edward Garnet’s relationship with his older wife Constance, and while it is not perhaps as interesting from a literary perspective as the one he later builds with Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, it exposes the tastes and ideas of serious English language readers as well as the influences coming from outside England. Constance’s home was in Whitechapel, where a density in Russian immigrants reflected her future work in translation. As a couple, they made do with Edward’s job reading and Constance’s as a librarian.
Constance was bit by the bug of Russian exotic influence in the form of Volkhovsky, a Russian political refugee who taught her Russian and who wrote for the Anglo-Russian Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, founded by Sergei Stepniak, to which Society Unwin belonged. As a point of interest apart from literature, Constance later fell in love with Stepniak, but Edward fell under his spell too. Their marriage functioned for propriety and the sake of their son. Garnett would be later consoled by Ellen Maurice Heath.
Ellen, called Nellie, is noted to have studied under the very weird Walter Sickert, about whom Patricia Cornwell wrote a book that makes a case for Sickert as the London murderer Jack the Ripper. Readers who love to steep themselves in the dank streets of 19th century London will love the way the threads of Edward Garnett’s life illuminate London’s literary social consciousness.
As a dramatic example, when Constance’s eldest brother Arthur Black killed his wife Jesse and his son Leslie, aged fifteen months, and then killed himself, Joseph Conrad reacted with ill-humored jealousy and burst out: “Nothing of the kind has ever come my way! I have spent half my life knocking about in ships, only getting ashore between voyages! I know nothing, nothing! Except from the outside.”
Garnett’s wife is remembered as a noted translator but her obsession with Stepniak helped drive Edward Garnett to a nervous breakdown. Probably his own desire to gain literary note on a par with those writers whose names he helped gain prestige may have increased his angst. J.M. Dent, for whom Garnett would also eventually read, published Garnett’s book of prose poems titled An Imagined World.
Garnett introduced Dent to the writer Ernest Rhys, who became first editor of the Everyman series. Rhys has written that Garnett wanted to “find an effective literary form in which to represent individual consciousness, but he lacked the creative talent of the likes of Joseph Conrad, Virgina Woolf or Ford Madox Ford. . .”
Be that as it may, Edward seemed to understand his reasons for liking new writers. He thought that Henry Lawson and Robert Louis Stevenson brought “remote corners of the planet to attention” thus adding “to the old world’s realization of its new life.” He also kept his eye on writers who might write about life in some part of the British Isles that was previously unexplored.
Smith has missed very little. She notes that works “submitted by literary agencies rather than individuals bore the brunt of his wrath.” Literary agents began surfacing in the early 20th century and were not held in high regard by publishers. Agents then made the mistakes that writers do now—not knowing what kind of material might be of interest, for instance. They submitted work that did not fit Duckworth’s list, another publisher for whom Garnett read. Garnett convinced Duckworth to publish "El Ombu," by W. H. Hudson, a writer who outsold Conrad in his own lifetime.
Among Garnett’s amazing discoveries was T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. T.E. Lawrence was none other than Lawrence of Arabia. Garnett was drawn to people who were, like he himself, a mass of contradictions—and T.E. Lawrence was definitely that.
I did come out of this book wondering how, if Garnett had discovered T.E. Lawrence, Conrad and D.H.Lawrence (for whom Garnett also edited and gave notes on avoiding labored metaphors and too many adjectives), he never seems to have crossed paths or made any comments on Marmaduke Pickthall, a novelist who spoke fluent Arabic and whose works were admired by H.G. Wells, D.H. Lawrence and E. M.Forster? Pickthall is best remembered today as an eminent translator of the meaning of the holy Quran.
Helen Smith is to be lauded for her assiduous research and brilliant assessment of a pivotal figure in British publishing history. There is much here to intoxicate book lovers.
My books at Amazon: The Red Sea Bride by “Sylvia Fowler,” Under a Crescent Moon: Stories of Arabia, Burning Boats: The Birth of Muslim Spain, Wax Works. I am currently working on a French translation of The Jinn in the Clock.
There were some freedoms involved in being a reader: the reader didn’t have to show up at the office every day. He might collect manuscripts once a week or so and take them home to read on his own schedule. If paid readers arranged their time well, they could get their own writing done and possibly be published by the house they read for.
As a reader, Edward Garnett proved to be a powerful connection for writers whom he believed had the requisite storytelling and literary skills, and he would move mountains to get them published. He had a keen sense of who showed promise and usually he was right. In addition, he was a gifted editor and a loyal friend to the writers he championed. He is credited with having discovered Joseph Conrad, T.E. Lawrence, and D.H. Lawrence, among many others. He was a champion of female writers, like Barbara Baynton of Australia.
Garnett came from a talented family. He was the son of Richard Garnett, who made a career in the manuscripts department of the British Library. The Garnetts' careers ranged from a paper mill owned and operated by a great grandfather, to printing, scholarship and language study. They consorted with scholarly and artistic people whom Richard Garnett met as Superintendent of the British Museum Reading Room, including Samuel Butler and William Michael Rossetti. Young Edward had for playmates Ford Maddox Ford (né “Hueffer”) and Rossetti’s daughters. (Over time, there would be a falling out between the Hueffers and the Garnetts).
While the power to recommend a writer for publication may sound significant to aspiring authors, the job of reader was not well paid and the work was grueling. Edward Garnett, who read for several different publishers during his career, once estimated that he read and wrote reports on 700 books a year. Rejections were more numerous than acceptances, and they ranged from being delivered “with sweetness” to rejections that “advise[d] burial.” The process was/is important, for a publisher’s reader—someone like Edward Garnet or the novelist Frank Swinnerton, who read for Chatto & Windus--hoped thereby to reduce the chances of the public reading pure gibberish.
Because Garnett’s careful eye and taste found talented writers and helped make their works famous (sometimes telling the writer what project to focus on, what to cut out and what to expand) Garnett has a claim to fame himself, which Smith has carefully helped cement by analyzing the roots of his character and ethics. She demonstrates that his father Richard passed on a “scorn for worldly success” to all his children. Indeed, Ford apparently revered Richard Garnett“as a near mystical fount of learning.” Garnett Sr. was well known and popular, attracting “literary ladies” including the children’s author Arabella Buckley. Smith does an admirable job of sketching the London literary milieu that framed Garnett’s childhood and youth.
Edward Garnett’s first job as reader, when around 20 or younger, was with the publisher T. Fisher Unwin, himself the son by a second marriage of a printer. Poor Unwin seems to have possessed the personality of a drenched stick in a bog. Unwin along with Heinemann, John Lane, Hutchinson and Dent all created publishing houses during the latter part of the 19th century. For all Unwin’s boorishness, he was kind enough to publish Garnett’s stagnant novel The Paradox Club. Unwin also put out Garnett’s Light and Shadow, which Helen Smith writes, “lacks any light and shadow in its execution.” H.G. Wells was kind enough to read that latter novel in 1903 and deliver a gentler critique to Garnett.
Yet this awkward novelist was, in his son's words, like "a cat with kittens" when he found talent. Money did not sway him. For instance, Garnett was taken with the “dreamy, otherworldly” William Butler Yeats, who was so poor that he had to “black-up his heels so as to cover up the holes in his stockings . . .” and he convinced Unwin to accept Yeat’s novella John Sherman.
Smith tells the story of Edward Garnet’s relationship with his older wife Constance, and while it is not perhaps as interesting from a literary perspective as the one he later builds with Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, it exposes the tastes and ideas of serious English language readers as well as the influences coming from outside England. Constance’s home was in Whitechapel, where a density in Russian immigrants reflected her future work in translation. As a couple, they made do with Edward’s job reading and Constance’s as a librarian.
Constance was bit by the bug of Russian exotic influence in the form of Volkhovsky, a Russian political refugee who taught her Russian and who wrote for the Anglo-Russian Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, founded by Sergei Stepniak, to which Society Unwin belonged. As a point of interest apart from literature, Constance later fell in love with Stepniak, but Edward fell under his spell too. Their marriage functioned for propriety and the sake of their son. Garnett would be later consoled by Ellen Maurice Heath.
Ellen, called Nellie, is noted to have studied under the very weird Walter Sickert, about whom Patricia Cornwell wrote a book that makes a case for Sickert as the London murderer Jack the Ripper. Readers who love to steep themselves in the dank streets of 19th century London will love the way the threads of Edward Garnett’s life illuminate London’s literary social consciousness.
As a dramatic example, when Constance’s eldest brother Arthur Black killed his wife Jesse and his son Leslie, aged fifteen months, and then killed himself, Joseph Conrad reacted with ill-humored jealousy and burst out: “Nothing of the kind has ever come my way! I have spent half my life knocking about in ships, only getting ashore between voyages! I know nothing, nothing! Except from the outside.”
Garnett’s wife is remembered as a noted translator but her obsession with Stepniak helped drive Edward Garnett to a nervous breakdown. Probably his own desire to gain literary note on a par with those writers whose names he helped gain prestige may have increased his angst. J.M. Dent, for whom Garnett would also eventually read, published Garnett’s book of prose poems titled An Imagined World.
Garnett introduced Dent to the writer Ernest Rhys, who became first editor of the Everyman series. Rhys has written that Garnett wanted to “find an effective literary form in which to represent individual consciousness, but he lacked the creative talent of the likes of Joseph Conrad, Virgina Woolf or Ford Madox Ford. . .”
Be that as it may, Edward seemed to understand his reasons for liking new writers. He thought that Henry Lawson and Robert Louis Stevenson brought “remote corners of the planet to attention” thus adding “to the old world’s realization of its new life.” He also kept his eye on writers who might write about life in some part of the British Isles that was previously unexplored.
Smith has missed very little. She notes that works “submitted by literary agencies rather than individuals bore the brunt of his wrath.” Literary agents began surfacing in the early 20th century and were not held in high regard by publishers. Agents then made the mistakes that writers do now—not knowing what kind of material might be of interest, for instance. They submitted work that did not fit Duckworth’s list, another publisher for whom Garnett read. Garnett convinced Duckworth to publish "El Ombu," by W. H. Hudson, a writer who outsold Conrad in his own lifetime.
Among Garnett’s amazing discoveries was T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. T.E. Lawrence was none other than Lawrence of Arabia. Garnett was drawn to people who were, like he himself, a mass of contradictions—and T.E. Lawrence was definitely that.
I did come out of this book wondering how, if Garnett had discovered T.E. Lawrence, Conrad and D.H.Lawrence (for whom Garnett also edited and gave notes on avoiding labored metaphors and too many adjectives), he never seems to have crossed paths or made any comments on Marmaduke Pickthall, a novelist who spoke fluent Arabic and whose works were admired by H.G. Wells, D.H. Lawrence and E. M.Forster? Pickthall is best remembered today as an eminent translator of the meaning of the holy Quran.
Helen Smith is to be lauded for her assiduous research and brilliant assessment of a pivotal figure in British publishing history. There is much here to intoxicate book lovers.
My books at Amazon: The Red Sea Bride by “Sylvia Fowler,” Under a Crescent Moon: Stories of Arabia, Burning Boats: The Birth of Muslim Spain, Wax Works. I am currently working on a French translation of The Jinn in the Clock.
February 7, 2021
Very interesting and informative biography. I would love to get a hold on Garnett's letters. He seemed like the male version of Gertrude Stein! Very well written biography.
May 3, 2025
This book is a testament to an unsung hero, whose hands were silently guiding and molding the works of many turn of the century English writers. Although you would think the subject of being an editor/reader could easily be dry, Smith has written a captivating book that shown a light on an eccentric and intriguing literary figure.
December 27, 2017
Lapped this up!!! A wonderful Christmas present which would satisfy any bibliophile!
September 8, 2024
This book has been described in other reviews as being "dense," and I agree. At times I felt as though it might be providing perhaps a little too much detail. In the end, I think it was fine, but it is not a tome for the casual reader. I found the subjects of Edward Garnett's work with budding writers and also the state of the publishing industry to be enlightening. I don't know if I would have gotten along so well with Garnett, but it is clear he did tremendously important work over the course of his life. The most interesting parts for me were when Helen Smith focused on Garnett's collaborations with authors I have read, especially Joseph Conrad, John Galsworthy, D.H. Lawrence, and T.E. Lawrence (although I haven't read "Seven Pillars of Wisdom," but have at least seen the film, "Lawrence of Arabia"). Also, I was amazed at how Edward's wife, Constance Garnett, learned Russian as an adult and became well-known as a translator into English of Russian literature!
August 6, 2018
This dense and comprehensive biography of Edward Garnett, a late nineteenth/early twentieth century reader for publishing houses, took a long time to read but is well worth the time and effort. Most people (including myself) probably have not heard of Garnett but he worked with and promoted many prestigious authors including Joseph Conrad, John Galsworthy and D.H. Lawrence, among others. This is very well researched and gives an in-depth look at the literary world at the time. I received a digital ARC of this book through NetGalley in exchange for a honest review.
December 19, 2019
Dense, comprehensive and interesting. The story of a powerful influence. A remarkable life.
September 19, 2020
Well research and written biography of the influential critic, editor, publisher's reader and nurturer of new literary talent.
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