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Publishers reject 'Jane Austen' scripts

19/07/2007

A Jane Austen fan frustrated at a lack of publishing opportunities has claimed that even the literary great herself would struggle to release her books today.

David Lassman sent 18 publishers scripts of Jane Austen's work with only name changes to the characters and an author pseudonym of Alison Laydee.

He received rejections or was ignored by 17 of the publishers and only one, Alex Bowler from Jonathan Cape, picked up on his flagrant plagiarism of Austen's work.

Mr Bowler's reply read: "Thank-you for sending us the first two chapters of First Impressions; my first impression on reading these were ones of disbelief and mild annoyance, along, of course, with a moment's laughter.

"I suggest you reach for your copy of Pride and Prejudice, which I'd guess lives in close proximity to your typewriter, and make sure that your opening pages don't too closely mimic that book's opening."

But some publishers and literary representatives simply said it was not right for them, such as Penguin which described the book as a "really original and interesting read".

Mr Lassman came up with the idea of testing the publishers' evaluation procedures after struggling to get his own novel published.

"Getting a novel accepted is very difficult unless you have an agent first, but I had no idea at the scale of rejection poor old Jane suffered," he said.

Penguin said it was unlikely anyone even read Mr Lassman's text as most publishers only accept material forwarded by literary agents.

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