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The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure
A darkly comic, satirical reference book about writers who never made it into the literary canon
A signal event of literary scholarship, The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure compiles the biographies of history’s most notable cases of a complete lack of literary success. As such, it is the world’s leading authority on the subject.
Compiled in one volume by C. D. Rose, a well-educated person universally acknowledged in parts of England as the world’s pre-eminent expert on inexpert writers, the book culls its information from lost or otherwise ignored archives scattered around the globe, as well as the occasional dustbin.
The dictionary amounts to a monumental the definitive appreciation of history’s least accomplished writers. Thus immortalized beyond deserving and rescued from hard-earned obscurity, the authors presented in this historic volume comprise a who’s who of the talentless and deluded, their stories timeless litanies of abject psychosis, misapplication, and delinquency.
It is, in short, a treasure.
A signal event of literary scholarship, The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure compiles the biographies of history’s most notable cases of a complete lack of literary success. As such, it is the world’s leading authority on the subject.
Compiled in one volume by C. D. Rose, a well-educated person universally acknowledged in parts of England as the world’s pre-eminent expert on inexpert writers, the book culls its information from lost or otherwise ignored archives scattered around the globe, as well as the occasional dustbin.
The dictionary amounts to a monumental the definitive appreciation of history’s least accomplished writers. Thus immortalized beyond deserving and rescued from hard-earned obscurity, the authors presented in this historic volume comprise a who’s who of the talentless and deluded, their stories timeless litanies of abject psychosis, misapplication, and delinquency.
It is, in short, a treasure.
192 pages, Hardcover
First published November 4, 2014
9 people are currently reading
404 people want to read
About the author
C.D. Rose
16 books30 followersC. D. ROSE is a writer of short fiction and novels. He has published three books, The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure, Who's Who When Everyone is Someone Else, and The Blind Accordionist. A new collection of stories is coming soon.
His major influences are Calvino, Borges, Georges Perec and Danilo Kis. He is at home anywhere there are dusty second-hand bookshops, quiet libraries, and dark bars.
He is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow in Residence at the University of Manchester, UK.
His major influences are Calvino, Borges, Georges Perec and Danilo Kis. He is at home anywhere there are dusty second-hand bookshops, quiet libraries, and dark bars.
He is currently the Royal Literary Fund Fellow in Residence at the University of Manchester, UK.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
April 14, 2019
i didn't clock that this was fiction until i was … further in than i want to admit. the introduction blinded me - full as it is of pomp and academic jargon; quoting from a checklist of names designed to make all the white men in tweed coats cerebrally moist, and i was completely on board, believing i was going to read a series of entries about authors who had been screwed by circumstance but would have been great if not for that war, that late bus, that faulty typewriter.
re-reading the intro after this realization, one can see the little cheeky bits, but way back in spring or whenever i read this, i was fooled. don't be fooled.
it's a great book even if it is completely fabricated. because while i love books full of obscure literary tidbits, this one reads like nonfiction and involves stories that could have happened. it's real tragedy of life stuff, where people fail to become part of the literary elite not (always) because of their own shortcomings, but due to the tricksy little vagaries of life:
manuscripts left on trains, fed to pigs, burned, bibliophagy, the unreliability of public transportation, procrastination, overpreparation, overediting, being strongarmed and poorly guided by editors, graphomania - publishing a book is nearly as prone to an unsatisfying outcome as rearing a child, and these stories are truly tragic. they're like literary missed connections, but sadder.
take the case of marta kupka, who was given the expensive gift of a typewriter as a child, but considered it too majestic to sully with just any old story, so she waited until she was eighty years old to finally commit her story to paper:
Sadly, although the intervening years had been kind to the typewriter, they had taken their toll on Kupka's eyesight and she failed to notice that the well-inked ribbon had now dried up completely. She wrote incessantly for three weeks, completing the long tale of her life, failing to see that not a single word of what she wrote actually made it onto the paper.
weep.
and casimir adamowitz-kostrowicki, whose story opens this collection with a bang:
Think, if you will, of Kafka asking Max Brod and Dora Diamant to burn all his papers when he eventually succumbed to the TB that had been slowly killing him for years. Think of Virgil, weak with fever and unable to put the finishing marks on his Aeneid, arriving in the harbour at Brindisi and asking that his work be destroyed rather than left unfinished. Think of Lavinia Dickinson, who did not burn her sister's poems. And now think of Casimir Adamowitz-Kostrowicki.
You cannot, of course, because unlike Franz Kafka, Publius Vergilius Maro and Emily Dickinson, Casimir Adamowitz-Kostrowicki had a friend faithless enough to obey his dying wishes.
as someone who still mourns the lost memoirs of byron (which was the opposite of this situation - he wanted them published, but instead his friends had a book burning party after his death), this story was very effective.
it was 1914, and casimir had gone off to war, leaving his manuscript with his best friend, telling him to destroy it if he did not make it back. the literary elite who had read the manuscript were convinced it was "the first great modern novel," and would have overshadowed La Recherche, made The Man Without Qualities look as dull as its title, dwarf Ulysses in its range and scope, render To the Lighthouse small and parochial
but a promise is a promise and
By 1918, Levallois had not heard a word from his friend and, desolate, built a small bonfire on the street outside his Montmartre home. Passers-by thought he was celebrating the end of the war.
(Unknown to Levallois, Adamowitz-Kostrowicki had not perished at the front but had been badly shellshocked and did indeed return to Paris that very week, and may have even been trying to visit his friend but a horse, spooked by fireworks set off as part of the festivities, bolted and trampled him to death.)
and thus was a masterpiece lost forever.
that parenthetical part killed me, back when i thought this was nonfiction. now it just makes me chuckle. ruefully.
it's a fun little book, and there's enough "real" material in there - references made to similar-and-true situations where great works were lost or never written, to make it feel real, and if you are a booky person, you will probably dig it.
it's not a great book for gulping, though. i would take it a chapter a day, or it might all run together.
come to my blog!
re-reading the intro after this realization, one can see the little cheeky bits, but way back in spring or whenever i read this, i was fooled. don't be fooled.
it's a great book even if it is completely fabricated. because while i love books full of obscure literary tidbits, this one reads like nonfiction and involves stories that could have happened. it's real tragedy of life stuff, where people fail to become part of the literary elite not (always) because of their own shortcomings, but due to the tricksy little vagaries of life:
manuscripts left on trains, fed to pigs, burned, bibliophagy, the unreliability of public transportation, procrastination, overpreparation, overediting, being strongarmed and poorly guided by editors, graphomania - publishing a book is nearly as prone to an unsatisfying outcome as rearing a child, and these stories are truly tragic. they're like literary missed connections, but sadder.
take the case of marta kupka, who was given the expensive gift of a typewriter as a child, but considered it too majestic to sully with just any old story, so she waited until she was eighty years old to finally commit her story to paper:
Sadly, although the intervening years had been kind to the typewriter, they had taken their toll on Kupka's eyesight and she failed to notice that the well-inked ribbon had now dried up completely. She wrote incessantly for three weeks, completing the long tale of her life, failing to see that not a single word of what she wrote actually made it onto the paper.
weep.
and casimir adamowitz-kostrowicki, whose story opens this collection with a bang:
Think, if you will, of Kafka asking Max Brod and Dora Diamant to burn all his papers when he eventually succumbed to the TB that had been slowly killing him for years. Think of Virgil, weak with fever and unable to put the finishing marks on his Aeneid, arriving in the harbour at Brindisi and asking that his work be destroyed rather than left unfinished. Think of Lavinia Dickinson, who did not burn her sister's poems. And now think of Casimir Adamowitz-Kostrowicki.
You cannot, of course, because unlike Franz Kafka, Publius Vergilius Maro and Emily Dickinson, Casimir Adamowitz-Kostrowicki had a friend faithless enough to obey his dying wishes.
as someone who still mourns the lost memoirs of byron (which was the opposite of this situation - he wanted them published, but instead his friends had a book burning party after his death), this story was very effective.
it was 1914, and casimir had gone off to war, leaving his manuscript with his best friend, telling him to destroy it if he did not make it back. the literary elite who had read the manuscript were convinced it was "the first great modern novel," and would have overshadowed La Recherche, made The Man Without Qualities look as dull as its title, dwarf Ulysses in its range and scope, render To the Lighthouse small and parochial
but a promise is a promise and
By 1918, Levallois had not heard a word from his friend and, desolate, built a small bonfire on the street outside his Montmartre home. Passers-by thought he was celebrating the end of the war.
(Unknown to Levallois, Adamowitz-Kostrowicki had not perished at the front but had been badly shellshocked and did indeed return to Paris that very week, and may have even been trying to visit his friend but a horse, spooked by fireworks set off as part of the festivities, bolted and trampled him to death.)
and thus was a masterpiece lost forever.
that parenthetical part killed me, back when i thought this was nonfiction. now it just makes me chuckle. ruefully.
it's a fun little book, and there's enough "real" material in there - references made to similar-and-true situations where great works were lost or never written, to make it feel real, and if you are a booky person, you will probably dig it.
it's not a great book for gulping, though. i would take it a chapter a day, or it might all run together.
come to my blog!
December 20, 2014
The seventies were a particularly slow period. He spent all of 1973 poring over a single word, and most of 1974 erasing it.
C.D. Rose gathers all manners of authorial misfortune in his collection of imagined authors. I have to admire his Borgesian project as well as his conceit. The traces of the latter afford one the grim grin when pondering the Pens of Omission.
It wasn't until I had finished the book this evening that I realized the author hails from Manchester. He laments the dearth of a true Mancunian Sage in one of the final pieces. I'm not sure this achievement will pave the way for posterity. Such is the terrain of this survey: the references litter the ground and while you are chuckling at a nod to Wu MIng or 50 Shades, you miss the glib segues to Paul Nizan or Miodrag Bulatovic.
Any taxonomy of failure should be frustrating or boring. How many errors can we ponder without losing interest? The encapsulated contexts proved sufficient for me and I thus breezed along, even after considering dumping the book 2-3 times in the initial 50 pages. There is an adroit eye for detail and it is effective.
C.D. Rose gathers all manners of authorial misfortune in his collection of imagined authors. I have to admire his Borgesian project as well as his conceit. The traces of the latter afford one the grim grin when pondering the Pens of Omission.
It wasn't until I had finished the book this evening that I realized the author hails from Manchester. He laments the dearth of a true Mancunian Sage in one of the final pieces. I'm not sure this achievement will pave the way for posterity. Such is the terrain of this survey: the references litter the ground and while you are chuckling at a nod to Wu MIng or 50 Shades, you miss the glib segues to Paul Nizan or Miodrag Bulatovic.
Any taxonomy of failure should be frustrating or boring. How many errors can we ponder without losing interest? The encapsulated contexts proved sufficient for me and I thus breezed along, even after considering dumping the book 2-3 times in the initial 50 pages. There is an adroit eye for detail and it is effective.
February 10, 2017
Çevirisini yaparken çok eğlendim.
Yazar olmayı çok istemiş ama bir türlü başaramamış insanların ironik hikayelerini sarkastik bir dille anlatan, çok enteresan bir kitap.
Yazar olmayı çok istemiş ama bir türlü başaramamış insanların ironik hikayelerini sarkastik bir dille anlatan, çok enteresan bir kitap.
February 24, 2015
An entertaining overview of 52 (fictional) writers who never quite made it. The author’s strategy of rescuing figures from otherwise sure obscurity is similar to Paul Collins’s in Banvard’s Folly or even Megan Mayhew Bergman’s in Almost Famous Women. My favorite invented coincidence: both T.E. Lawrence and Stanhope Barnes lost manuscripts at Reading train station (where Lawrence really did misplace a briefcase containing Seven Pillars of Wisdom).
Want to read
November 11, 2014I hope this book fails (as a commercial item).
March 22, 2015
I can't think of another book that has lampooned the conceits and fame-mongering of literary writers (fictitious as they are) as much as "The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failures." It's a fun read; each chapter is punctuated by concise narratives, earnest beginnings and sardonic fates, but it does approximate the feeling of a stoic drunk at the bar, regaling you with endless yarns; all variations on one theme.
C.D. Rose is a skilled writer, with a rotund vocabulary and ergonomic turns of phrase. His narrative voice is a pleasure, and I don't think it ever veers toward the sadistic just for sadism's sake. The satire comes more from playfulness and the author's wont to charm.
If you are looking for something that satirizes the writerly ego, this short book just may do it. But again, the book is slim, as are the chapters (each one about a different failed author); and after reading the twentieth tale, depicting (more or less) the same promising start and ironical end, you may begin to feel just as numb as the doomed characters the book so playfully portrays.
C.D. Rose is a skilled writer, with a rotund vocabulary and ergonomic turns of phrase. His narrative voice is a pleasure, and I don't think it ever veers toward the sadistic just for sadism's sake. The satire comes more from playfulness and the author's wont to charm.
If you are looking for something that satirizes the writerly ego, this short book just may do it. But again, the book is slim, as are the chapters (each one about a different failed author); and after reading the twentieth tale, depicting (more or less) the same promising start and ironical end, you may begin to feel just as numb as the doomed characters the book so playfully portrays.
September 24, 2015
Just a quick one today, folks.
Okay, for those of you who are like me easily confused, this book is a work of fiction. None of the people in it actually existed. I did not realize this until three-quarters of the way through the book. SO YOU KNOW.
That probably says a lot about how effective it is as a satire (which is to say, pretty damn). The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failures is a semi-inspirational collection of (again let me emphasize this word) fictional would-be authors who failed in one way or another. I actually found it a pretty good inducement to write, watching all of these people fail. However, it's also a satire of literary fiction and the more pretentious people who gravitate toward it, as well as the academic cottage industry that has sprung up around analyzing it.
It's okay, but I think I maybe read it too fast? The biographies seemed to blur together after a while, and the satire got a little tedious after a while. I don't know. Maybe just read this one chapter at a time, to avoid it getting to be too much.
Okay, for those of you who are like me easily confused, this book is a work of fiction. None of the people in it actually existed. I did not realize this until three-quarters of the way through the book. SO YOU KNOW.
That probably says a lot about how effective it is as a satire (which is to say, pretty damn). The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failures is a semi-inspirational collection of (again let me emphasize this word) fictional would-be authors who failed in one way or another. I actually found it a pretty good inducement to write, watching all of these people fail. However, it's also a satire of literary fiction and the more pretentious people who gravitate toward it, as well as the academic cottage industry that has sprung up around analyzing it.
It's okay, but I think I maybe read it too fast? The biographies seemed to blur together after a while, and the satire got a little tedious after a while. I don't know. Maybe just read this one chapter at a time, to avoid it getting to be too much.
January 20, 2015
This is a strange, splendid little book that uses fictional biographies to explore the largest body of writers in history: the unsuccessful ones. Ranging across time and place, Rose considers authors who could never get past great first sentences, writers whose commitment to authenticity led them to crime, scribes who vanished after black magic rituals gone wrong, and a writer who simply didn't want to get out of bed. By turns funny, sad, and (for prospective writers, anyway) sobering, this book is worth your time.
February 26, 2015
Amusing, even clever, but not essential reading. i think this material works best on a blog. I did enjoy the art/literary references that are very much part of this book - and some of the entries are totally winning - but overall a one-note reading experience. What would be really interesting is collecting stories on writers who fail to write a certain book - or does that exist already? Nevertheless this is an OK book.
February 1, 2018
This book is fiction and very funny, but it does a great job coming off very serious, scholarly, and intellectual, including an index and cross-references. It is short (3-4 pages each) biographies of people whose literary endeavors live undiscovered for a variety of reasons from being written in dead languages to being incomplete to being lost on trains. It is dryly funny, and a great reminder of the struggles of literary aspirants.
December 16, 2014
Every writer would be wise to own a copy of this book. This fictional lexicon of writers who couldn't is not only exceedingly clever, but filled with powerful insights into the pitfalls and pleasures of attempting art.
December 21, 2014
Very entertaining stories of how literary failure was accomplished. This book shows how easily any of our most famous authors could have fallen into obscurity by telling the stories of those who have; frequently through no fault of their own. Interesting and frequently humorous.
August 6, 2017
Kitap, elli üç öyküden oluşuyor. Öykülerin her birinin en fazla dörder sayfalık yer kapladığını göz önünde bulundurursak, iyi bir okuyucuysanız, bir günün sabahında başladığınız bu kitabı en kötü ihtimalle ertesi günün öğleninde bitirebilirsiniz. Yalnız, kitabın çabuk bitebilir bir kitap olması ile ilgili bu özelliğinden başka bir özelliği daha var ki, o da içerisindeki hikayelerin orjinalliği ve güzel anlatımı.
O veya bu şekilde "olamayan" onca şeyi, bizlerden büyük başka bir kuvvetin oldurmadığına inanma ihtiyacımızı tekrar gözden geçirmemize neden olabilecek bu küçük hayat hikayelerini okumaktan kesinlikle zevk aldığımı söyleyebilirim.
Kitapla ilgili yapılabilecek tek olumsuz eleştiri, kitabın bazı yerlerinde göze çarpan çeviri oturmamışlığı. Bu oturmamışlığın günahı da ilk baskının boynuna asılabilir bence.
O veya bu şekilde "olamayan" onca şeyi, bizlerden büyük başka bir kuvvetin oldurmadığına inanma ihtiyacımızı tekrar gözden geçirmemize neden olabilecek bu küçük hayat hikayelerini okumaktan kesinlikle zevk aldığımı söyleyebilirim.
Kitapla ilgili yapılabilecek tek olumsuz eleştiri, kitabın bazı yerlerinde göze çarpan çeviri oturmamışlığı. Bu oturmamışlığın günahı da ilk baskının boynuna asılabilir bence.
April 19, 2024
Amusing at first, but ultimately rather slight and silly. I thought this was serious at first, and I think a serious version of this book would be much more interesting. This reads like a series of Monty Python sketches.
April 26, 2024
Lost Tales
These short, bittersweet tales often had me chuckling ruefully many times, maybe even evoking a wistful tear or two. It must have been as much fun to dream up and write these stories as it was to read them.
These short, bittersweet tales often had me chuckling ruefully many times, maybe even evoking a wistful tear or two. It must have been as much fun to dream up and write these stories as it was to read them.
November 26, 2023
Mildly amusing.
October 18, 2014
Taking long-form comedy to brave new heights, this is a fictive attempt to document the who, what, when, why, where, and how of writers who tried and failed. Rose lists authors you won’t find anywhere, not because they are obscure—or even unknown—but because they don ‘t exist. Ellery Fortescue. Lord Frederick Rathole. Elsie La Rue (though I was serenaded by her great-grandaughter, Bubbles, who popped out of a cake on my last birthday). Don’t be taken in, as I first was, by Sorbonne instructor Andrew Gallix’s Very Serious Introduction in which he notes all sorts of high-level details, such as that most of the writers “…devoted their lives to the pursuit of some Gesammtkunstwerk…”. It’s hilarious once you’re in on the joke as Rose’s entries are so shot through with dark humor, as when he relates the life of one Brit, Thomas Bodham (1750s) whose father traded the family’s sole book for a pig. The animals’ foot was given to baby Thomas to eat, and when Thomas was marooned on Goa later in life, he pined for the chance to “…eat a jellied pork by-product.” Bodham decided to walk home from India and record his Luffe and Travells along the way (though you can see he had some misspellings there). Labeling Bodham’s life as “an epic writ small” simply caps the well. The last entry, on Sara Zeelen-Levallois, is a wonderful, affectionate testament to writers and writing that could stand for anyone who ever dreamed of writing something that would change someone’s life—or to simply be understood. “Whether it is read or not,” reads one bit, “the power of writing is one of the greatest things we have.” VERDICT Rose well utilizes that trick good writers have of including readers and making them feel smart. Plus this book is snot-throwingly funny.
Find reviews of books for men at Books for Dudes, Books for Dudes, the online reader's advisory column for men from Library Journal. Copyright Library Journal.
Find reviews of books for men at Books for Dudes, Books for Dudes, the online reader's advisory column for men from Library Journal. Copyright Library Journal.
December 24, 2022
My mistake was to read this book straight through as if it were any other book. I know now that this book is a collection of entries from a satirical blog that posted (weekly?) updates. These little jokey vignettes work at a one-a-week pace, but reading them back to back collected in book form, you quickly realize that there are really only a half-dozen different jokes going on and you're just cycling through various iterations of them.
Just go to the original website and read a couple, and you'll enjoy them. As a book this is not good.
Just go to the original website and read a couple, and you'll enjoy them. As a book this is not good.
April 14, 2016
Loved this book. It's interesting to see people take an interest in the authors that don't have recognizable names or titles. A fun, quick read to satisfy one's curiosity on the mystery of books--who writes them, how they are made (or in these cases aren't made).
September 2, 2014
Unexpectedly most emotion-cracking final few paragraphs ever.
November 27, 2014
A compelling conceit, brilliantly executed. a quirky, playful, erudite and poignant series of brief biographies of lost and forgotten writers, that's comic, bizarre, and affecting by turns.
April 15, 2016
Hilarious, poignant, and smart.
December 10, 2014
A very amusing little book, beautifully set, humorous and poignant, with unexpected and subtle wistfulness between the lines.
Read
April 8, 2015Odd. Disheartening when I think of the talents wasted and the time wasted by the talentless. Wish I didn't see so many of my own failings in so many of these "failures."
Read
May 17, 2015Didn't get too far into this book before I discovered that it is actually fiction. Disappointed. I've read similar books that were non-fiction. Much more interesting.
July 14, 2015
Not actually finished, but it was an enjoyable concept for the few entries I read before returning it to the library. An important point to consider is that this is "fiction".
January 12, 2015
Quirky, ingenius, satire at its best is situated in TBDLF. Be amused and be prepared to snicker.
July 16, 2015
A wonderful reminder that everyone in the world sucks, not just you.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews