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To: Ozguy1945

I had never heard of her. Thanks for sharing these great quotes.


2 posted on 07/16/2023 5:05:43 AM PDT by xcullen
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To: xcullen

Kathleen Norris was one of those people who was an absolute giant in her day and now is almost completely forgotten.

No one remembers Charlotte Riddell (50 novels), or Ellen Price who outsold Charles Dickens in some places, or Mary Elizabeth Braddon (over 80 novels), and so on.

I had always assumed, when I was young, that if you were a very successful writer in the modern age there would be no way for you to later become unknown or completely forgotten by the general public. That is not the case. I became so interested in this sort of thing that I even once had a short list of modern books - books printed in the last 140 years or so, that had become lost - not a single known copy survives. These were usually cheap paperback novels. Still, hundreds or thousands of copies were printed. You would think there would be at least one copy somewhere - but no, not a single copy anywhere.

It’s strange how some things disappear from common knowledge because of sweeping cultural changes and a few decades of time. Many people still remember who Jon-Erik Hexum was - an actor who accidentally killed himself with a prop gun in the mid-1980s. But no one of the last few decades knows who Robert Harron was. He was a famous actor who was one o f the stars of The Birth of a Nation. He accidentally shot himself at age 27. While dying he was arrested for violating the Sullivan Act. Poor man. Completely forgotten today.


3 posted on 07/16/2023 9:33:58 AM PDT by vladimir998 ( Apparently I'm still living in your head rent free. At least now it isn't empty.)
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