Why have Forest’s books been neglected?

[antfan.livejournal.com]

I don’t think any thread has directly addressed this: just why have such brilliant books languished out of print, with Antonia Forest hardly known in her lifetime, while lesser authors have taken the limelight?

 

The only explanation I’ve seen is that she was perceived as upper class and elitist, when the fashion was all for “sordid realism” (the Marlows and their Maker).  But I wonder.  Growing up in the 1970s and 80s I don’t remember much gritty realism, but library shelves bulging with KM Peyton’s Flambards, Noel Streatfeilds and a sprinkling of Diana Wynne Jones…Even that ultra cool American Harriet the Spy had a nanny and a cook, for goodness sake.

 

I think any explanation has to cover two parts: the child reader and the children’s book establishment.  My thoughts are these:

 

1)       For child readers, AF is hard.  I found AF substantially harder (though ultimately more rewarding) than Noel Streatfeild, for example, and Kingscote a much tougher place to understand than the Chalet School.  AF’s historicals in particular were way harder than contemporaries such as Barbara Willard or Rosemary Sutcliffe.  In practise, this sophistication of language and content means her child fan base was likely to be confined to a narrow group of very advanced, probably girl readers.  Add to that, the books weren’t coming out very regularly.  For these reasons, it was hard for a body of child fans to build up and provide the word-of-mouth momentum to keep the books in print (regardless of the views of adult librarians and critics) in the way that happened with the Chalet School or Ruby Ferguson’s Jill pony books.

2)       For the adult literary establishment, I suspect its the fact that they are genre novels – rather than upper class - that is key.  Critics and prize judges despise genre in children’s books and adults’ alike – and AF’s novels are school stories and family adventure stories (with pony elements too).  I think some of AF’s deeper themes (to adult eyes) such as death and religion are more easily overlooked for being sandwiched into stories concerned with netball or cricket. (It would be interesting to know how they were reviewed at the time – if at all.  And of course the adult readers should have registered the fact that the quality of the writing about cricket was absolutely excellent!)

 

I still can’t quite understand it – after all, we love the books!  I’d love to hear what people think about this.