Publishing Company Blog: October 2021

Sunday, October 31, 2021

Prized personal items of Lord Byron go on display in Edinburgh

Exhibition at city’s university explores poet’s links with Greece and support for its independence

Huma Abedin says kiss from unnamed senator was not sexual assault

Clinton aide gives first interview for memoir Both/And
Abedin also discusses 2016 election and Anthony Weiner

Friday, October 29, 2021

Franz Kafka drawings reveal ‘sunny’ side to bleak Bohemian novelist

Surreal drawings by author of The Trial – which he demanded be burnt after his death – to be published

Thursday, October 28, 2021

Cosy crime and Greek myth retellings: the Waterstones book of the year shortlist

Janice Hallett’s murder mystery has pipped Richard Osman to a spot on the bookseller’s list

Wednesday, October 27, 2021

Harry Potter publisher reports record profits despite supply chain crisis

Titles such as Tom Kerridge’s latest cookbook prove popular for Bloomsbury during Covid crisis

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Hilary Mantel play to close amid Covid uncertainty

Royal Shakespeare Company cancels planned extension of The Mirror and the Light in West End

Monday, October 25, 2021

‘Exceedingly rare’ folio edition of Shakespeare’s Henry IV for sale

An original fragment from the first folio, estimated to be worth up to $100,000, will be auctioned this week

Sunday, October 24, 2021

Luke Kennard wins Forward poetry prize for ‘anarchic’ response to Shakespeare

Notes on the Sonnets took the £10,000 award for best collection, while Caleb Femi and Nicole Sealey came out on top in the other categories

A-level textbook withdrawn over ‘inappropriate’ Native American question

USA 1865-1975: the Making of a Superpower asked whether treatment of Native Americans had been exaggerated

Hilary Mantel tells a great tale but ruined abbeys tell a different one, says expert

Final part of Wolf Hall, now on the West End stage, is under fire from English Heritage for its ‘Tudor bias’ in charting history

Thursday, October 21, 2021

Realists of a larger reality wanted: Ursula K Le Guin prize for fiction to launch in 2022

Award aims to honour imaginative fiction that champions ‘hope and freedom, alternatives to conflict and a holistic view of humanity’s place in the natural world’

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Mental health charity declines donation from Jamie Lynn Spears

Britney Spears’s younger sister has had her offer to give proceeds from her forthcoming book to the non-profit organisation This Is My Brave turned down

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

Lucy Caldwell wins BBC national short story award for ‘masterful’ tale

Having been shortlisted twice before, this year the Northern Irish writer takes the £15,000 prize for All the People Were Mean and Bad

• Read the story below

Sunday, October 17, 2021

DC Comics swaps Superman motto ‘the American way’ with ‘a Better Tomorrow’

Announcement comes after revelations that new version of Superman is bisexual

How Leonard Cohen mined sacred texts for lyrics to his songs

New book reveals extent of the musician’s fascination with scriptures of Judaism and Christianity

Saturday, October 16, 2021

Female Spanish thriller writer Carmen Mola revealed to be three men

Trio step out from behind pseudonym marketed as ‘Spain’s Elena Ferrante’ to accept €1m prize

Friday, October 15, 2021

Baillie Gifford prize reveals ‘outstanding storytelling’ on 2021 shortlist

With subjects ranging from postwar Germany to the fall of Robert Maxwell and the Sackler family, judges praise ‘exciting and invigorating’ finalists

Enniskillen mounts Oscar Wilde tribute with flight of gold-leaf swallows

Installation inspired by The Happy Prince will be accompanied by similar celebration of Samuel Beckett, who like Wilde was educated in the town

Thursday, October 14, 2021

Hanif Abdurraqib wins the Gordon Burn prize for A Little Devil in America

The poet and essayist’s extraordinary collection on Black culture in the US is ‘simultaneously a joyous celebration and a crushing reproach’

Gary Paulsen, author of young adult adventure Hatchet, dies at age 82

Final novel to be published in 2022 by author known for tales of wilderness survival that became staples of US school reading lists

TS Eliot prize unveils ‘voices of the moment’ in 2021 shortlist

Ten collections in competition for the £25,000 award ‘should enter the stage and be heard in the spotlight’, say judges

Final Inspector Montalbano novel, finished years ago, is published in UK

Andrea Camilleri was determined that his crime series could not be continued by another writer, leaving concluding novel with his publisher long before his death in 2019

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Sally Rooney turns down Israeli translation on political grounds

The writer has refused to sell Hebrew translation rights to her latest novel Beautiful World, Where Are You due to her stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict

Monday, October 11, 2021

Kakwenza Rukirabashaija named this year’s International Writer of Courage

The Ugandan novelist, who was tortured in prison over his book The Greedy Barbarian, has been selected by Tsitsi Dangarembga as part of the PEN Pinter prize

DC Comics reveals latest Superman as bisexual in new issue

Caped crusader will be in a same-sex relationship while combatting the climate crisis and protesting against the deportation of refugees

Former MasterChef contestant’s book pulled amid plagiarism accusations

Copies of Makan, a collection of Singaporean recipes by Elizabeth Haigh, have been withdrawn after suggestions that she ‘copied or paraphrased’ another author

‘Solved’: the mystery of the ‘slut’ scrawled on The Grapes of Wrath manuscript

Swedish academics think they can explain why the derogatory term appears at the end of Steinbeck’s text

Friday, October 8, 2021

John le Carré, Daisy May Cooper and Paul McCartney expected to boost book sales at Christmas

The annual event known as ‘Super Thursday’, when most of the hardbacks aimed at the Christmas market are published, promises big names and a boon for the industry

Thursday, October 7, 2021

Winnie-the-Pooh Poohsticks bridge sold for £131k to Sussex landowner

Bridge featuring in AA Milne stories bought by estate owner whose father used to play Poohsticks with author’s son

Abdulrazak Gurnah wins the 2021 Nobel prize in literature

The Tanzanian novelist has been named laureate “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”

The Nobel prize in literature 2021 – live!

Which author will become the 114th literature laureate?

Nobel odds: Annie Ernaux is the favourite to win this year’s prize for literature

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

Pair win Nobel prize in chemistry for work on organic catalysts

Benjamin List and David MacMillan’s work has paved way for new classes of small molecule drugs

Tuesday, October 5, 2021

National Book Awards 2021: Robert Jones Jr and Lauren Groff among finalists

The winners of this year’s awards, in five categories, will be announced in a ceremony in November

Bernardine Evaristo picks black authors for London ‘short story stations’

Author teams up with Canary Wharf to distribute short works by five writers during Black History Month

Trio of scientists win Nobel prize for physics for climate work

Sykuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi share award for advancing climate knowledge

Monday, October 4, 2021

Handwritten manuscript of The Grapes of Wrath to be published for the first time

This early version of John Steinbeck’s most famous novel, written in less than 100 days, will be released by SP Books on 7 October

If Trump wins in 2024 ‘he will be about revenge’, says former press secretary

Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s third press secretary, says he will run for president again and presents a greater threat to democracy

Trump seeking to elevate Republicans who refuse to accept Biden victory

Nobel odds: Annie Ernaux is the favourite to win this year’s prize for literature

Ernaux, who writes novels about daily life in France, is one of her country’s most acclaimed authors. Could she win the world’s most prestigious literary prize on Thursday?

HarperCollins removes story from David Walliams’ book The World’s Worst Children

After criticism of the ‘casual racism’ of a story about a Chinese boy, the publisher has taken it out of the next print run of the bestselling anthology