The ‘lost’ novels that Anthony Burgess hoped would make him rich

The acclaimed writer, who gained only meagre rewards from A Clockwork Orange, planned a money-making trilogy

Anthony Burgess, the author of A Clockwork Orange who was born 100 years ago this year, described himself as “a graphomane”. When not composing music, he was indefatigably at work on many genres: novels, short stories, children’s books, plays, film scripts, poems and countless book reviews, many of them for the Observer.

Burgess was the hack’s hack, and also that creature now as fabled as the hippogriff, “a man of letters”. In 1961, for instance, he published no fewer than three novels. Once, he even reviewed one of his own books pseudonymously.

Related: Anthony Burgess at 100: high art, low entertainment

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