Margaret Mitchell
If you missed the first two installments of 30 famous authors whose works were rejected by publishers, take a look at them here:
Rejected authors who are now famous #1 - #10
Rejected authors who are now famous #11 - #20
On with the list of rejects!
21. Margaret Mitchell
Ms. Mitchell's Gone With the Wind was rejected 38 times before finally finding a publisher.
22. Judy Blume
Ms. Blume received “nothing but rejections” for two years.
According to Ms. Blume:
I would go to sleep at night feeling that I'd never be published. But I'd wake up in the morning convinced I would be. Each time I sent a story or book off to a publisher, I would sit down and begin something new. I was learning more with each effort. I was determined. Determination and hard work are as important as talent.
Determination and hard work certainly did the trick for Ms. Blume, who is now considered to be one of the most influential children's literature writers of her generation.
23. Kenneth Grahame
Mr. Grahame’s Wind in the Willows was refused by a publisher because it was an
Irresponsible holiday story
It’s Poland and the rich Jews again.
The long-winded Marcel Proust
25. Marcel Proust
Mr. Proust’s behemoth Remembrance of Things Past received this delightfully plain-spoken critique from one publisher:
My dear fellow, I may be dead from the neck up, but rack my brains as I may I can't see why a chap should need thirty pages to describe how he turns over in bed before going to sleep.
utterly untranslatable.
for your own sake do not publish this book.
Comments
Actually, I rather agree with some of these. The only reason some of these are classics is because someone decided it should be so and convinced everyone else that they weren't really intellectual unless they liked it too.
Hey Jana,
Now I'm dying with curiosity -- which ones are you talking about?
Michelle Kerns
I agree with the publisher who rejected proust
Ok I really agree with the rejection on D H Lawerence Lady Chatterly's Lover! We read it for book club and it was so hard to make myself read it!
Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead was also rejected 12 times before it was published.
Rita Mae Brown wrote in her autobiography that a publisher (or agent, can't recall) literally threw her submission of Rubyfruit Jungle and her out of the office, screaming obscenities all the way.
That isn't accurate about GONE WITH THE WIND. Mitchell never submitted it to a publisher; it was solicited from her by an editor who was familiar with her newspaper columns, and who, when she told him she was writing a novel, demanded first look (and then acquired it).
Don't forget that writers like H.P. Lovecraft, Phillip K. Dick, Christopher Moore, and Robert Bloch all dealt with a lot of rejections.
Larry Poupard
Detroit Zombie Examiner
Nicely done!
My professor said the same thing happened to Jean-Paul Gagnon but now he's got heaps! I guess these brick walls are necessary trials or something for authors to go through.
This is really an interesting (and inspiring) piece, especially for aspiring writers. It is very well done. However, I still to this day don't know where that rumor came from that Gone With the Wind was rejected some 38 times. I've heard that many times before but according to Mitchell's own information in the book Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind Letters 1936 to 1949 the book Gone With the Wind was actually accepted before the manuscript was even finished.
fantastic list...I was was laughing (at the idiot publishers) so hard I was crying
Great article! Proust's rejector was A. Gide, who was working as a reader for the editor at the time.
How the hell isn't Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence by Robert M. Pirsig on this list?
It was rejected by 121 publishers, more than any other bestselling book. It went on to sell 5 million copies.
I once read that the only people worth encouraging are those that you cannot discourage.
This list gives hope. Thank you.
"Chicken Soup for the Soul" was rejected multiple times as well.
Where are your sources?
Duh....where the hell is JAMES JOYCE...................
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