It’s that time of year. The schools have broken up, and our hard-working MPs are having a break from plotting and conniving with a well-earned seven-week rest. Jeremy Corbyn will finally have time to cut that Grime version of ‘The Red Flag’ and Tim Farron can catch up with all of his friends on Grindr. The Maybot can be powered down for some much-needed maintenance to establish which defective circuit boards caused the voice unit to get stuck on the phrase ‘Strong and Stable’ and Empathy Mode to get jammed in the ‘off’ position. And of course repairs to her GPS system after a sudden outbreak of crop circles was traced to her doing a dizzying series of u-turns in a wheat field.

It’s the time of year that’s known in the newspapers as the ‘silly season’, when there’s nothing much happening and they have to drag in all sorts of nonsense to fill those column inches. It’s a bit like that here, with nothing much new going on apart from us taking it in turns to go on holiday. There’s no better time of year to sit on the patio with a glass of wine as the sun dips in the sky and let your mind drift. This summer those of us of a certain age will have closed our eyes and, with an imaginary waft of patchouli oil and certain illegal substances, turned our minds back fifty years to the golden summer of 1967, now known as ‘The Summer of Love’. The world’s attention became focused on the events in San Francisco where 100,000 young folks (known as hippies or ‘flower children’) converged on the city to reject the constraints of modern life and focus on peace, sharing and community. And for free love, drugs and music too. The spirit of San Francisco spread around the world; in the UK the movement was eagerly embraced. The first British Rock Festival was held in the unlikely location of Spalding in Lincolnshire (and with the less-than-hip name of ‘Barbeque 67’.) The ‘14 Hour Technicolour Dream’ in the Alexandra Palace featured Pink Floyd, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Soft Machine, The Move, Tomorrow, and The Pretty Things. Hits like ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’, ‘Itchycoo Park’ and ‘Hole in My Shoe’ were pumped out by the ten pirate radio stations that were broadcasting that year. I can remember all of the songs and where I heard them; my memories of the year are all in Kodachrome. Psychedelia became the theme of the time, whether it be in music or fashion, and ‘Swinging London’ was the place to be.

It felt like something unique was happening – that the balance of the world was shifting. The Beatles drug-fuelled masterpiece ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ was released in late May that year and I can recall ‘A Day in the Life’ being played at a school assembly, and its lyrics being discussed earnestly by our teacher in English lessons. The world was turning on, tuning in and dropping out and somehow seemed to be a kinder place; when The Beatles sang ‘All You Need Is Love’ on the first live global television link in June, it seemed like it could almost be true. They were strange times, and it wasn’t just the young that were affected – my best friend’s dad, who was a Tax Inspector with the Inland Revenue, packed a suitcase and flew off solo to San Francisco to hang out with the hippies in Haight-Ashbury for a few weeks. Although he came back and resumed his normal working life, he always had a certain twinkle in his eye afterwards, took to wearing a fedora and cravat to work, and developed a taste for prog-rock.

And what of the Wordsworth team? I was largely a spectator of the events of that year as the hippie chicks weren’t, particularly on the lookout for slightly tubby fifteen-year-old schoolboys with a subscription to ‘Popular Gardening’; although my ability to provide the Latin names of the flowers that the girls at school wore in their hair gave me, if not a cachet, then a certain curiosity value.

Elsewhere, Avril was getting married for the first time, and Helen – who was 14 and living in Palmers Green – had a Saturday job packing cucumbers, was kicked out of ballet school for being too fat and expelled from Greek evening school on the first night; so some things haven’t changed…

Although the dream of the ’60s was said to have died with the Rolling Stones Altamont festival in 1969, its memory lingered on for many years afterwards, particularly in fashion. It’s hard to imagine now when I look at the endless rows of dark blue, grey and black suits in Marks and Spencer just how startling men’s clothes were for years afterwards, in a range of colours now rarely seen outside of Michael Portillo’s wardrobe. Most of my suits throughout the 1970s I recall with a mixture of nostalgia and embarrassment, although my fondest memory was a chap in the High Street bank where I was working (c.1975) who would turn up to work in a lime-green pinstripe three-piece suit, and not look out of place. Golden days…

Peace and Love,

The Wordsworth Team

FAR OUT! THE WAY WE WERE IN 1967

Derek posing with ‘Popular Gardening’. Steady, ladies… Note that the essential accessory of the day is the Mateus Rose bottle bedside light.

The blushing bride – Avril in 1967

Helen in 1967 – already a rebel…

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Today’s newsletter finds us in a nostalgic mood as 7 June marks the 25th Anniversary of the first publication of Wordsworth Classics.

For book lovers, the world was a much different place then as we are talking about the days before the internet and before supermarkets sold books. More to the point, these were the days of the Net Book Agreement which prevented any discounting of prices, so if you wanted to read Oliver Twist or Pride and Prejudice then you had no choice but to stump up the full (exorbitant) price for the current editions from one of the major publishers.

As a result, when the £1 classic hit the shelves of the bookshops and high street chains the reaction was sensational. I can well remember my first encounter with them at my local branch of John Menzies. My attitude to reading classic literature at the time was very much on par with my intention to drink less and take more exercise – something I firmly intended to do at some unspecified date in the future. But walking into the shop and seeing them for a £1 – a £1!!! – was astounding. So it was that I left with an armful of classics, at the same time as just about everybody around the country was doing the same thing.

The man behind it was Mike Trayler, our late Managing Director, who came up with the idea on a flight back from the United States and it is the Trayler family in the form of Helen and their daughter Nichola who have taken this deceptively simple idea through to the current milestone. Because although the market has changed, the underlying idea still works – who can resist classic literature at these prices? And thanks to our ever-expanding presence in the educational market, although we might not be hitting the heady heights of the early 1990s, we are feeling pretty good about the next 25 years!

[Pictured left: Hold the front page – Mike Trayler hits the headlines]

We were interested to read the results of the recent poll carried out by Canon UK to find the Top 50 greatest storytellers of all time. The final list was a very varied bunch, as it included not just authors but musicians and film directors but we were pleased to see some familiar names in the Top Ten:

Roald Dahl
Charles Dickens
William Shakespeare
JK Rowling
Steven Spielberg
Hans Christian Andersen
Lewis Carroll
Walt Disney
Enid Blyton
J.R.R Tolkien

There’s nothing we like better than a good adaptation of one of our classics to create some interest but while we wait for Mr Darcy to stride towards the lake once more, we were happy to settle for the new documentary by Lucy Worsley ‘Jane Austen: Behind Closed Doors’ that screened recently on BBC2. The programme was based on a journey taking in some of the places associated with Jane, and those that inspired the locations for some of her books.

Further Austen news this month involved the disclosure of the artwork of her to be used on the new £10 note which is to be formally released on 18 July, being the 200th anniversary of her death. We couldn’t help but be slightly amused by the controversy raging over the image that has been used. Lucy Worsley was quoted in ‘The Sunday Times’: “It’s deeply ironic that the image chosen by the Bank of England isn’t really her… It’s an author publicity portrait after she died in which she’s been given the Georgian equivalent of an airbrushing.” Those of you with long enough memories may recall that we have a bit of form in this field ourselves after we got a little creative with her image on one of our books back in 2007, although it was Helen’s quote “She was not much of a looker” that caused the story to go global. – See the article on the BBC website

We could have warned the Bank of England that you don’t mess with Jane Austen fans!

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None but the brave deserves the fair – John Dryden

So, another London Book Fair is done and a very enjoyable three days it was – if you were there on Tuesday then you would have seen all five of us on the stand for at least some of the time until the Vegan splinter group set off up Kensington High Street in search of healthy options. Although we’re there primarily to sell books, it’s good to just chat to old friends, and meet new lovers of classic literature.

As we mentioned in our previous newsletter, the level of hospitality of the alcoholic kind on the Wordsworth stand in years gone by was the stuff of legend so we’re sure that the ghosts of book fairs past were collectively shaking their heads in disbelief to see that it was not until 4.00 on the second day that an offer of strong drink was finally accepted by a customer. And the first thing to run out was bottled water. Unbelievable…

Inevitably, like old soldiers swapping stories of past campaigns, fond memories of past fairs are revisited, most of which can’t be fully recounted here, like the circumstances which led up to a certain past Managing Director of ours

spending the night in a German jail. Or the time when an old friend of Wordsworth, sadly no longer with us, arrived late on the stand looking slightly dazed and bedraggled and was discovered to have an unexplained tyre track running down the back of his jacket.  Not that this means that Helen was much less outrageous this time around (see picture below) although our favourite moment was when she hid all of our promotional cloth bags because ‘people keep taking them’.

In other news, our John Maynard Keynes book is now available but the release of our ‘Selected H.G. Wells’ has been put back to early April as we are just redesigning the covers for this series and this will be the first in the new style. More on this next month.

Other new products on the way are two new additions to our popular box-set series, one a complete set of Jane Austen’s novels and the other a collection of Sherlock Holmes. Both retail for £19.99 and should be available in the second week in April. Full details coming soon.

And finally: the new website is getting closer, as the snagging list is pretty well complete, so we are looking at an early April launch. We’ll let you know when the big day is set.

Right, that’s it for today – time we got back to sorting through this big pile of business cards.

All the best, The Wordsworth Team

Pictures:

Main Picture – In a variation on ‘Where’s Wally?’, play ‘Where’s Wordsworth?’.

Above- The Wordsworth stand: we like to go for a tasteful, under-stated theme, partially inspired by a Dyno-Rod van that we saw once.

Right – Helen with Sanjay from OM Books posing with some items that ‘fell into her bag’ while she was in our hotel rest room. Sanjay only just managed to hang on to his jacket after Helen took a fancy to that too…

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We were reading last week about how Lloyds of London have banned their staff from drinking alcohol during working hours and we must admit to having a tinge of sadness on hearing that one of the last bastions of the ‘lunchtime session’ had fallen. Not that we feel too much regret for the passing of this old business tradition, any more than we miss the experience of opening the pub door and waiting for the miasma to clear sufficiently to see the bar. But we must acknowledge that we have a bit of history when it comes to the ‘liquid lunch’. For a start, our old office was next door to ‘The Albion’ in Crib Street, Ware, which became our unofficial boardroom. And we had our own system of calibration when it came to Gin & Tonic: a double was a ‘Family Size’ (there was no name for a single; the concept was not a familiar one). A treble was an ‘Industrial’ and, if things got really messy, it could crank up to an ‘Agricultural’… These days on the rare occasion we have a couple of drinks over a business lunch our main ambition for the afternoon is to remain awake for long enough to get the train home.

When it came to book fairs, our hospitality was legendary and as the London Book Fair rolls around once more (London Olympia 14-16 March) we can’t help to reminisce about the many friends and colleagues that we’ve shared a glass or two with over the years. Naturally, we’re there again this year on Stand 6C109, a position that has been carefully selected to (a) maximise visitor footfall and offer excellent sight lines and (b) be close to a security door with a malleable guard so that Helen can pop out easily for fag breaks. So if you’re going to be there, then do drop in and see us. We might even offer you a drink if your company policy allows you to have it. To book an appointment, drop us an email at derek@wordsworth-editions.com.

As you may have gathered (we’ve not been reticent about it), our collection of H.G. Wells classics launched in the New Year and to complete our Wells programme we are releasing ‘Selected Works of H.G. Wells’ in early March in our Special Editions series, which retails at £7.99. If it does well, then we’ll look at releasing a hardback version next year.

Also coming out in March is our John Maynard Keynes edition (The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money plus The Economic Consequences of the Peace). OK, it’s not the snappiest title you’ve heard, but we see it as a companion volume to Wealth of Nations, which has rather exceeded our expectations by becoming the second-highest seller in our World Literature series over the last twelve months. Keynes will come into stock around 7 March (ISBN 9781840227475, Retail Price £3.99)

Finally, if you’ve noticed a slowing down in the pace of our marketing material over the last few weeks that’s because we’re busy beavering away at our new website. We’re getting there gradually – we’ve just been given a ‘snagging list’ which suggests some progress towards completion. We’ll give you the nod once we have a definite launch date and, like everyone else these days, we’d appreciate some feedback too.

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As you might guess, we’re rather fond of the English language here at Wordsworth Editions, given that we have some pretty impressive examples of its use on our list.

The way that it changes and develops with the passing of time is fascinating. Our old friend William Shakespeare was, of course, a major contributor to the language, as demonstrated by Bernard Levin’s famous list that forms an exhibit at the Shakespeare Museum in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Not all of his words have made it through the centuries of course, which is a shame because some would still be useful – 2016 was certainly a vintage year for snollygosters.

A useful guide to modern culture is the Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year – in previous years ‘vape’ and ‘selfie’ has been duly crowned, but the winner in 2016 was ‘post-truth’, defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.

Although the word may be new, the sentiment certainly isn’t; no less than Joseph Goebbels said: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”.

Now, we’ve mentioned in the past our difficulty in marketing titles written by a bunch of authors who are largely inert, but are we limiting ourselves unnecessarily by sticking stolidly to the facts? Isn’t it time that Wordsworth embraced the zeitgeist of the 21st Century and started telling some whoppers?

We could start low-key: perhaps a piece on James Joyce’s little-known career as a stand-up comedian or a weekly quote from Jane Austen’s ‘Little Book of Profanities’.

But ultimately we would need to go for the big one; taking inspiration from the notorious ‘Hitler Diaries’ of the 1980s, imagine the coverage we would get from the publication of one of Shakespeare’s lost plays. How difficult would it be to come up with a fake manuscript for ‘Love’s Labour Won?’

A few sheets of parchment, a smear of posset here, a splash of mead there and some Elizabethan plot devices: ‘Tis a dark and stormy night / But hark, doth a shot ring out?’.

I reckon we could pull it off; if like me, you are 6’2” of taut bronzed muscle and have a voice that commands a room, then you get taken very seriously.

But perhaps not. Maybe we are better suited to one of the beaten finalists in the ‘Word of the Year’: ‘hygge’, a Danish word meaning ‘a quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being’.

Like curling up in front of the fire with a glass of something warming and a Wordsworth classic.

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Looking back on 2016, those of us of a certain age may be reminded of the lyrics of a Grateful Dead song: ‘Lately, it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it’s been’. But while it has been a unique year in many ways, it is unlikely to be remembered fondly by many, even allowing for the cosy glow of nostalgia that the passing years bring.

It was, of course, the year of Democracy in Action with the referendum and the U.S. Presidential Election producing unexpected and controversial results. (My wife says I should include a third – ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ – but not knowing my fleckerl from my fishtail, I don’t feel qualified to comment). How you view the results will depend on your views on Europe and Mexicans but certainly, both campaigns generated a dispiriting level of vitriol and sheer hatred without parallel in my recollection. We make no apology for stating we were firm ‘Remainers’ here at Wordsworth, in line with the book trade generally. Certainly, a large part of this is due to the nature of the trade; when we exhibit at the London Book Fair we so enjoy meeting old friends from every continent. To me, it underlines the spirit of Jo Cox’s quote ‘We are far more united than the things that divide us’, although ten minutes watching the evening news is usually enough to find me feeling like a misty-eyed dreamer.

The Brexit campaign did have one positive outcome for me. As the years pass I try to keep an eye on how my mental and physical faculties are holding up. I have found that a pretty good measure of my reaction time is the speed with which I can snatch up and operate the remote control when Piers Morgan appears on my TV screen. During the course of the campaign, I found myself shattering my personal best on countless occasions as the grinning visage of Nigel Farage hove into view yet again. This constant barrage took its toll until my battered synapses finally seized up completely when confronted by the combined forces of Farage and Trump mugging for the camera, producing a catatonic state that could be relieved only by having an acceptable bottle of Malbec uncorked under my nose.

H.M. The Queen celebrated her 90th birthday and made it safely through to her 60th televised Christmas speech, which seemed an achievement in itself because if Democracy was one major theme of 2016, the other was Death. The archetypal pop star used to live fast and die young but we have become more used to our idols slowing down, going vegan and undertaking a series of farewell tours, not always to the benefit of their musical legacy – as Randy Newman put it, ‘I have nothing left to say / But I’m gonna say it anyway / Thirty years upon a stage / And I hear the people say / Why won’t he go away’. But the events of 2016, from Glenn Frey of the Eagles in January to George Michael at the end of December, with David Bowie, Prince and many more in between, took artists who still had much more to offer. Music apart, the losses seemed to go on and on – Terry Wogan, Victoria Wood, Alan Rickman, Carrie Fisher…it felt like the Grim Reaper was working double shifts.

[As an aside, the longevity of The Rolling Stones against this background continues to amaze – not only did they write ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, but surely some form of pact was involved too – how else do you explain that Keith Richards still has a pulse? And surely Mick Jagger has something of Dorian Grey about him?].

So, as we bid a less-then-fond farewell to 2016, what of the future? The arrival of our first grandchild in November caused me to reflect upon the world she would grow up in – but ultimately it is our grandchildren and their children that will create that future and all we can do is try to teach them tolerance, compassion and respect for other people’s beliefs and cultures. And if my granddaughter and her contemporaries can be brought up to have a love of classic literature in high-quality, reasonably-priced editions to help keep paying her granddad’s pension, then so much the better.

Wishing you all a Happy and Peaceful New Year from all of us at Wordsworth.

[Lyrics above are from ‘Truckin’’ (Garcia/Weir/Lesh/Hunter) and ‘I’m Dead (But I Don’t Know It) (Newman)]

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It’s not often that we have cause to be jealous of mainstream publishers but, as we continue to adapt to the brave new world where social media is apparently the key to raising your business profile, we must own up to the occasional tinge of envy.

Our problem is the sheer amount of ‘stuff’ we have to generate to keep on top of the game and we sometimes ponder how much easier would be to have not only a stream of new books coming out but also a whole load of authors on hand who can always be called on to help out; imagine being able to invite Stephen Fry in for a chat about his latest release; or knowing that you only have to mention J.K. Rowling in the headline of a piece and you will break the internet.

That’s not to say that we don’t appreciate the fine body of authors that make up our list – in fact, you couldn’t have a more easy-going bunch. Minimal demands, never a word of complaint and never a mention of the R-word; our recurring nightmare is of Robert Louis Stevenson being reanimated and demanding royalties on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde backdated to 1993. But the problem is that when it comes to interviews they do tend, by definition, to be a little on the reticent side.

We briefly considered getting around this by investing in an Ouija board, but decided this could be fraught with peril; imagine having your illusions shattered by discovering that Jane Austen swore like a docker; or having the Earl of Oxford banging on about why he’s not getting any credit for all those popular Elizabethan plays he wrote.

As it is, we have to settle for an acknowledgement of their contributions in our blogs and social media accounts on the anniversaries of their births and deaths.

But if we could interview them, what a fine choice we would have. And if we had to choose one, it would probably be Oscar Wilde – not only would it be fascinating, but there would be a fair chance that we would net one of his timeless epigrams.

And at this festive time of year, what better gift for a lover of fine literature than Oscar’s Collected Works available in a handsome hardback for only £12.99.

It’s only fair that the last word for this piece should come from Oscar himself, and indeed that they should be his (almost) last words: ‘This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do’.

See our full range of Oscar Wilde titles.

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‘Who Do You Think You Are’ returned to BBC1 on Thursday evening and featured Danny Dyer discovering some unlikely royal ancestors in his family tree. Most of us lack such distinguished antecedents and indeed many of us, lacking a crack BBC research team to do the spadework, have spent many decades laboriously compiling records of the ups (but mainly downs) of our forebears [not an experience that Goldilocks shares with us; she only has three bears*].

Family history, at its most mundane, can be little more than a list of Births, Marriages and Deaths of ancestors that we feel no connection with; what transforms it is being able to place these long-forgotten people into their geographical and social context. Another recent BBC series, ‘The Victorian Slum’ did this admirably for those of us that had families living in London during that period. In my case, both of my parents’ families lived in Islington in North London a century or so before its gentrification [on a side note, how can one area support so many restaurants? Do those luxury penthouse flats not come with kitchens?]

The programme, based on a number of families living in a reconstructed slum in Stratford, detailed their progress through the decades of Queen Victoria’s reign as they struggled to survive on or below the breadline, and reflected the social and economic changes during her long reign. What it revealed was a gradual change in society’s perception of the poor; in the early decades, it was considered to be what these days might be called a lifestyle choice. The lack of compassion for their plight was well illustrated by the vogue for slum tourism (or ‘slumming) in the early 1880s when well-heeled members of the upper classes would clamber aboard omnibuses at midnight to ogle at the squalor in the most deprived parts of London.

One of the earliest influences on this change of perception can be found in Wordsworth’s catalogue: Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and The London Poor. Based on a series of articles he wrote for the Morning Chronicle, it is the classic account of life below the margins in the greatest Metropolis in the world and a compelling portrait of the habits, tastes, amusements, appearance, speech, humour, earnings and opinions of the labouring poor at the time of the Great Exhibition. His findings were widely read and had an impact on the thinking of many, including Charles Dickens. If there was one thing that the programme demonstrated then it was the indomitability of the human spirit, at first to simply survive but then to aspire to escape from the poverty trap. Ultimately the Victorian and Edwardian poor were able to save themselves, as they united, took to the streets in protest and ultimately organised themselves into fledgling trade unions. In a small way, I am part of this piece of history; the building where my Dad was born in 1910 and grew up had merited a special mention in the notes to Charles Booth’s London Poverty Maps of 1889. Popham Street in Islington was colour coded somewhere between BLACK: ‘Lowest class. Vicious, semi-criminal and DARK BLUE: ‘Very poor, casual. Chronic want.’ Booth noted darkly: ‘Probably bad characters have come here from Quinn’s Buildings’. Thus proving that in the space of a generation a family can move from the depths of poverty to the pinnacle of the publishing trade**.

But equally, as the path of Danny Dyer’s tree was traced from the throne of England to the mean streets of Walford, these things can go either way.

* Genealogist’s joke. We’re fun to be with.

**OK, maybe a degree of exaggeration here for artistic effect. What we in the trade call ‘poetic licence’.

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We must admit a certain bias here, because if there’s one thing that brings a smile to our faces at Wordsworth Towers then it’s a film or TV tie-in with one of our books.

Admittedly our Classics of World Literature series isn’t usually a source of such material. Robbie Coltrane as Doctor Johnson in Blackadder the Third gave us a tenuous link – but the Langdon film’s link to Dante’s Inferno, being part of his The Divine Comedy (available both individually and collectively from Wordsworth), gives us the chance of a little flurry of interest in the deeper recesses of our catalogue.

Naturally, it’s our main classics range that usually provides the material for such welcome bonuses and we spend many a happy hour scrutinising the TV schedules looking for the next classic adaptation.

We’re rarely disappointed and occasionally they are spectacular – with the BBC’s Dickensian series, it felt like all of our Christmas Carols had come at once.

There are certain authors – Jane Austen; the gift that keeps on giving – that can be relied on to come around every few years. It’s a great comfort to us to know that probably somewhere even now some new, smouldering leading man is donning Mr Darcy’s white linen shirt and heading for the lake.

But we digress – let’s get back to our Classics of World Literature series. Okay, so obvious commercial adaptations don’t immediately jump out. The Communist Manifesto – The Musical anyone?

Our personal pick would be de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Any screenplay that could introduce a deranged, strangely coiffured, misogynist orange racist as the villain would surely run and run.

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