Biography: literary

Fifty Years in the Fiction Factory

The Working Life of Herbert Allingham - 1867-1836

by Julia Jones

Description

Fifty Years in the Fiction Factory is probably one for the academic market as it's the outcome of a PhD thesis and several years funded-research into a unique archive now deposited with the Unversity of Westminster. It is however written in a style that is completely accessible to the general reader and was praised by reviewers in a range of publications such as the TLS, History Today, The Oldie, the Church Times and The Literary Review. Herbert Allingham was the father of detective novelist Margery Allingham but he was also a dedicated writer of serial fiction for the cheapest papers in the Great Age of Print. Allingham was writing for the newly literate but he never patronised or wrote-down to this audience. Fifty Years in the Fiction Factory is a social history, a contributionto the history of reading and a portrait of an intelligent, conscientious, attractive fiction producer. Allingham wrote millions of words and entertained millions of people but he was almost always anonymous and was never published in book form. He would have been forgotten like so many of his peers had his daughters, Margery and Joyce, not loved and admired him sufficently to preserve his diaries, account books, letters from editors and file copies of the ephemeral story papers in which his work was published. Julia Jones inherited this archive and her PhD research was fully-funded by the Arts and Humanities research Council. The thesis (Family Fictions 2006) has been completely rewritten for this attractively presented biography which uses a large number of rare illustrations from the penny papers where Allingham's stories appeared. Professor Jenny Hartley called it "an important contribition to book history."

Fifty Years in the Fiction Factory

More Information

Rights Information

World ex UK;L

Bibliographic Information

  • Publisher Golden Duck
  • Publication Date October 2012
  • Orginal LanguageEnglish
  • ISBN/Identifier 9781899262076
  • FormatPaperback
  • Primary Price 17.99 GBP
  • Pages392
  • ReadershipProfessional and Scholarly
  • Publish StatusPublished
  • Dimensions216x138 cm
  • Illustrationblack & white

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