Francis King, the novelist, who is 78, complains that because of this age he had difficulty finding a publisher for Prodigies, his 27th novel. "This is a country in which if you're old you become invisible," he says. "People only notice you if you're taking up too much time at the checkout, or if you fall over in the street. And the same is true if you are a writer. I feel that I'm writing probably my best work, but I do not feel it's getting the recognition it should have."
Is King's a justifiable complaint, or is he revealing the peevishness of a once-lauded author who is not being treated with the deference to which he has become accustomed?
Giles Gordon of the Curtis Brown agency, which represents such literary luminaries as Peter Ackroyd, Barry Unsworth and Fay Weldon, agrees that King has a point. "I think it is virtually impossible now for any novelist over the age of 30 to get published even if, like Francis King, they are successful. Publishers are not interested because their editors are all aged about 12 and they only want books by girls in their twenties, particularly if they are pretty. Ackroyd said to me recently he thought that if he started writing his novels now he would not find publisher."
Others point to the demise of literary fiction as the cause of King's rejection. Prodigies is about Alexine, an eccentric millionairess who, bored with the dreariness of high society in the Holland of the 1860s, goes on a journey of discovery through Africa with her mother, an aunt and an entourage of servants.
"Unashamedly epic in scope, King's leisurely inventory of their adventures in unknown lands takes its time to get going, but it has all the craftsmanship and descriptive richness of a Victorian classic, " wrote a reviewer in The Times. The literati claim that it is this craftsmanship and descriptive richness that probably persuaded Constable, one of King's former publishers, to turn the book down.
King's fellow novelist, Beryl Bainbridge, 66, backs his assertion that he is a victim of ageism. She argues that getting a book published today depends on how much publicity an author can generate. "If Francis wrote another novel now and sent a photograph of a bimbo and said he was 23 and pregnant, he'd be all over the newspapers," she says.
An editor at an international publishing house says that at her Monday morning meetings with people from marketing, sales and publicity "we never discuss the manuscript, the quality of the writing, the story - just how we are going to sell it".
King's first novel was published in 1946, and he was soon tipped as the most promising writer of his generation. He has written short stories, poetry, several biographies and travel books during a publishing career that spans more than half a century. Although that may be a record to be proud of, the flip side is that it means that he is old hat.
Patrick Janson-Smith, the joint-managing director of Transworld, which publishes books under such imprints as Corgi, Bantam Press and Black Swan, says: "Publishing is a fashion business. You don't get rich by bringing out books that don't sell. The business is fuelled by publicity and word of mouth. The chick-lit thing is on the wane, the Aga saga came and went; what is selling now is non-fiction books such as Simon Winchester's The Map That Changed the World. People are keen to educate themselves with bite-sized chunks.
London's literary Brat Pack - Toby Litt, Matt Thorne and Lana Citron, say - would by definition exclude an author of King's vintage. But what King may lack in contemporary chutzpah he more than makes up for with old-fashioned doggedness. He eventually found a small independent company, Arcadia, owned by Gary Pulsifer, an American, to take him and his novel on board. "Big houses don't want to publish books like Prodigies because they don't publish anything that is not sexy and can be hyped to death," says Pulsifer. "I think Francis has been clever, taking the Victorian novel as a vehicle and discussing relevant social issues of today that would not have been discussed in Victorian novels. This is possibly his most commercial book.
"Most of our writers are on the higher side of 50, if not 60. I don't particularly go out of my way to get older writers, but that seems to be what happens. We picked up the second novel by Brian O'Doherty, The Deposition of Father McGreevy, which had done the rounds here without finding a publisher." In spite of being born 1928, O'Doherty's novel was shortlisted for the Booker last year. It has sold 26,000 copies and is still selling.
"Big publishing houses are looking for books that will generate a lot of cash, and they place undue emphasis on the chick-lit type of book," says Pulsifer. "We need books to say something about life, not just reflect on what it is like to have a good time. Publishers should be shaping popular culture as well as responding to it."
Pulsifer may have come to King's rescue, but he knows hat will make booksellers and bookbuyers look at his list - Arcadia's 2001 catalogue has a front cover showing the back view of a naked blonde.
One of King's former publishers, who does not want his name published, argues that the author's rejection may have nothing to do with his age and more to do with the sales history of his books. "I think he is a fine writer but literary novels don't sell," he says. "Every bookshop can look on their computer and see how many books a particular author sold last time and may only order one copy. With a new author who has no sales history they make take ten on chance."
Being older is by no means a bar to getting published, as Mary Wesley whose first adult novel came out when she was 70, proves. Her hugely successful The Camomile Lawn was published two years later. John Bayley, the 76-year-old remarried widower of Iris Murdoch, had a bestseller two years ago with Iris, his moving account of his marriage and of her Alzheimer's. On the face of it, this was not a book to stir the hearts of a hard-nosed marketing team, but it walked off the shelves nevertheless.
Older people, and the issues that affect them, occasionally take centre stage in contemporary fiction. Sally Vickers's virgin heroine in Miss Garnet's Angel is a retired schoolmistress. Giles Waterfield, a former director of the Dulwich Picture Gallery in South London, has had his first novel, The Long Afternoon, published at the age of 52. A period piece about an elderly couple, it is based on his grandparents, who lived in Menton from 1913 until the outbreak of the Second World War. The book won the McKitterick Prize, which is for first-time novelists over 40. There is also a prize now for over-60 first-time novelists, the Sagittarius Prize.
For authors of any age who are rebuffed by publishers there is always the possibility of publishing their own book. Andrew Sinclair, who hit the headlines with his novel The Breaking of Bumbo in 1958 when he was 23, and has since had many more books published, has now, at 66, been obliged to publish his latest work of non-fiction himself. The Secret Scroll tells of Sinclair's discovery of an ancient Scottish cloth with a revealing history. His agent found four editors who wanted to publish it, only for it to be thrown out by the marketing people.
There is just one consolation. One day the Brat Pack will undoubtedly have to face similar ageism
© Heather Nicholson/The Times, 7th. August 2001
