As a former textbook editor and avid reader, I’m fascinated by books such as this, which deal with the role of editors in relation to the writers with whom they work. In many ways this book did not disappoint. It presents the life of the book editor Edward Garnett in the context of the literary production and reception of famous British writers including Joseph Conrad, T. E. Lawrence, D.H. Lawrence, and numerous others, while at the same time covering his personal life story. As well, it covers Garnett’s promotion of Russian literature, and also the role of Edward’s wife, Constance Garnett, in translating and promoting Russian literature in Britain. The book is full of well-researched historical and biographical detail, which is both a strength and a weakness. The narrative sometimes becomes bogged down by these details, especially when the author moves too far away from its main figure, Garnett, to explore the individual authors with whom he worked. For any literature lover, each of these diversions in itself can be fascinating; however, they do tend to slow the biographical trajectory of the work down considerably, making it one that can best be read in small doses and perhaps by a more scholarly than popular audience.

This book is like going inside the mind of a literary genius. And you'll come out that much richer in knowledge.

In the 19th century, writers sent their manuscripts directly to publishing houses like Unwin or Jonathan Cape. “Readers,” who were often themselves struggling writers, were employed to sift through other writers’ manuscripts (today called the slush pile) in search of treasures that would make their publishers rich. While the slush pile more or less still exists today, the steps to publication have multiplied, there being far more people in between the writer and publisher (unless the writer self-publishes).

There were some freedoms involved in being a reader: the reader didn’t have to show up at the office every day. He might collect manuscripts once a week or so and take them home to read on his own schedule. If paid readers arranged their time well, they could get their own writing done and possibly published by the house he read for.

As a reader, Edward Garnett proved to be a powerful connection for writers whom he believed had the requisite storytelling and literary skills, and he would move mountains to get them published. He had a keen sense of who showed promise and usually he was right. In addition, he was a gifted editor and a loyal friend to the writers he championed. He is credited with having discovered Joseph Conrad, T.E. Lawrence, and D.H. Lawrence, among many others. He was a champion of female writers, like Barbara Baynton of Australia.

Garnett came from a talented family. He was the son of Richard Garnett, who made a career in the manuscripts department of the British Library. The Garnetts' careers ranged from a paper mill owned and operated by a great grandfather, to printing, scholarship and language study. They consorted with scholarly and artistic people whom Richard Garnett met as Superintendent of the British Museum Reading Room, including Samuel Butler and William Michael Rossetti. Young Edward had for playmates Ford Maddox Ford (né “Hueffer”) and Rossetti’s daughters. (Over time, there would be a falling out between the Hueffers and the Garnetts).

While the power to recommend a writer for publication may sound significant to aspiring authors, the job of reader was not well paid and the work was grueling. Edward Garnett, who read for several different publishers during his career, once estimated that he read and wrote reports on 700 books a year. Rejections were more numerous than acceptances, and they ranged from being delivered “with sweetness” to rejections that “advise[d] burial.” One can imagine a publisher’s reader—people like Edward Garnet or the novelist Frank Swinnerton, who read for Chatto & Windus--hoped thereby to reduce the chances of reading pure gibberish.

Because Garnett’s careful eye and taste found talented writers and helped make their works famous (sometimes telling the writer what project to focus on, what to cut out and what to expand) Garnett has a claim to fame himself, which Smith has carefully helped cement by analyzing the roots of his character and ethics. She demonstrates that his father Richard passed on a “scorn for worldly success” to all his children. Indeed, Ford apparently revered Richard “as a near mystical fount of learning.” Garnett Sr. was well known and popular, attracting “literary ladies” including the children’s author Arabella Buckley. Smith does an admirable job of sketching the London literary milieu that framed Garnett’s childhood and youth.

Edward Garnett’s first job as reader, when around 20 or younger, was with the publisher T. Fisher Unwin, son by a second marriage of a printer. Poor Unwin seems to have possessed the personality of a drenched stick in a bog. Unwin as well as Heinemann, John Lane, Hutchinson and Dent all created publishing houses during the latter part of the 19th century. For all Unwin’s boorishness, he was kind enough to publish Garnett’s stagnant novel The Paradox Club. Unwin also put out Garnett’s Light and Shadow, which Helen Smith writes “lacks any light and shadow in its execution.” H.G. Wells was kind enough to read that latter novel in 1903 and deliver a gentler critique to Garnett.

Yet this awkward novelist was, in his son's words, like "a cat with kittens" when he found talent. Money did not sway him. For instance, Garnett was taken with the “dreamy, otherworldly” William Butler Yeats, who was so poor that he had to “black-up his heels so as to cover up the holes in his stockings . . .” and he convinced Unwin to accept Yeat’s novella John Sherman.

Smith tells the story of Edward Garnet’s relationship with his older wife Constance, and while it is not perhaps as interesting from a literary perspective as the one he later builds with Joseph Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, it exposes the tastes and ideas of serious English language readers as well as the influences coming from outside England. Constance’s home was in Whitechapel, where a density in Russian immigrants reflected her future work in translation. As a couple, they made do with Edward’s job reading and Constance’s as a librarian.

Constance was bit by the bug of Russian exotic influence in the form of Volkhovsky, a Russian political refugee who taught her Russian and who wrote for the Anglo-Russian Society of Friends of Russian Freedom, founded by Sergei Stepniak, to which Society Unwin belonged. As a point of interest apart from literature, Constance later fell in love with Stepniak, but Edward fell under his spell too. Their marriage functioned for propriety and the sake of their son. Garnett would be later consoled by Ellen Maurice Heath.

Ellen, called Nellie, is noted to have studied under the very weird Walter Sickert, about whom Patricia Cornwell wrote a book arguing that he was the London murderer Jack the Ripper. Readers who love to steep themselves in the dank streets of 19th century London will love the way the threads of Edward Garnett’s life illuminate London’s literary social consciousness.

As a dramatic example, when Constance’s eldest brother Arthur Black killed his wife Jesse and his son Leslie, aged fifteen months, and then killed himself, Joseph Conrad reacted with ill-humored jealousy and burst out: “Nothing of the kind has ever come my way! I have spent half my life knocking about in ships, only getting ashore between voyages! I know nothing, nothing! Except from the outside.”

Garnett’s wife is remembered as a noted translator but her obsession with Stepniak helped drive Edward Garnett to a nervous breakdown. Probably his own desire to gain literary note on a par with those writers whose names he helped gain prestige may have increased his angst. J.M. Dent, for whom Garnett would also eventually read, published Garnett’s book of prose poems titled An Imagined World.

Garnett introduced Dent to the writer Ernest Rhys, who became first editor of the Everyman series. Rhys has written that Garnett wanted to “find an effective literary form in which to represent individual consciousness, but he lacked the creative talent of the likes of Joseph Conrad, Virgina Woolf or Ford Madox Ford. . .”

Be that as it may, Edward seemed to understand his reasons for liking new writers. He thought that Henry Lawson and Robert Louis Stevenson brought “remote corners of the planet to attention” thus adding “to the old world’s realization of its new life.” He also kept his eye on writers who might write about life in some part of the British Isles that was previously unexplored.

Smith has missed very little. She notes that works “submitted by literary agencies rather than individuals bore the brunt of his wrath.” Literary agents began surfacing in the early 20th century and were not held in high regard by publishers. Agents then made the mistakes that writers do now—not knowing what kind of material might be of interest, for instance. They submitted work that did not fit Duckworth’s list, another publisher for whom Garnett read. Garnett convinced Duckworth to publish El Ombu, by W. H. Hudson, a writer who outsold Conrad in his own lifetime.

Among Garnett’s amazing discoveries was T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. T.E. Lawrence was none other than Lawrence of Arabia. Garnett was drawn to people who were, like he himself, a mass of contradictions—and T.E. Lawrence was definitely that.

I did come out of this book wondering how, if Garnett had discovered T.E. Lawrence, Conrad and D.H.Lawrence (for whom Garnett also edited and gave notes on avoiding labored metaphors and too many adjectives), he never seems to have crossed paths or made any comments on Marmaduke Pickthall, a novelist who spoke fluent Arabic and whose works were admired by H.G. Wells, D.H. Lawrence and E. M.Forster? Pickthall is best remembered today as an eminent translator of the meaning of the holy Quran.

Helen Smith is to be lauded for her assiduous research and brilliant assessment of a pivotal figure in British publishing history. There is much here to intoxicate book lovers.

Edward Garnett (1868 to 1837, London) was a highly regarded publisher, editor, critic who helped bring out the best in some of the highest regarded English language writers of the first half of the 20th century. Among his clients were Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, John Galsworthy, Stephen Crane, Ford Madox Ford, Henry Green and T. E. Lawrence. Garnett was much more than a literary editor to his clients, he was a friend and when needed a mentor. He was very involved in the early career of Joseph Conrad, he well might have given up trying to write in English without the encouragement of Edward Garnett. Smith devotes a lot of time to letting us get a strong feel for the business side of publishing. Edward Garnett had his own financial and personal struggles and Smith gives us a very sensitive account of his turbulent marriage to the famous translator of the Russians, Constance Garnett (1861 to 1946) and his relationship to his son David ( known in Bloomsbury Circles as “Bunny”, the nickname derives from a childhood stuffed animal.)

Both Edward and Constante had long term romances with others. We get a look at how Constance began her translations, I admit I was surprised to learn of her affairs. Her trips to Russia were fascinatingly treated. There was a lot more drama in the lives of the Garnetts than I expected.

He helped several American writers become established in England. Among them were Sarah Jewett, Robert Frost, and Sherwood Anderson. He seemed to have greatly admired Stephen Crane and did his best to help him professionally and personally. One of his most difficult clients was T. E. Lawrence, Edward Garnett was overwhelmed with the power of his The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Smith brings Edward Garnett, his clients, his affairs, his fatherhood, and his marriage vividly to life. An Uncommon Reader: A Life of Edward Garnett by Helen Smith will be a pleasure to read for anyone interested in 20th century English literature, as an art and as a business. I’m very glad I Read this book. There is a lot more in it than I have mentioned.


Helen Smith is British writer and scholar. She earned her PhD in literature from the University of East Anglia, where she is a lecturer in modern literature and the director of the master's program in biography and creative nonfiction. She has won the Biographers' Club Prize and the RSL Jerwood Award for Non-Fiction, and lives in South Norfolk with her husband. The Uncommon Reader is her first book.

Mel u
The Reading Life