The tale of Jules Verne’s Paris in the Twentieth Century contains a unique kind of irony. The novel, which was written in 1863, depicted a world with internal combustion engines, electric lights, skyscrapers, underground trains, and the gradual deterioration of literature due to technological advancements. After reading it, his publisher basically said, “Too depressing, too unbelievable, not worth printing.” Tucked away, the manuscript was forgotten. Then, 131 years later, in 1994, Verne’s great-grandson discovered it. The novel’s prophecies had already materialized by then. Verne’s readers were already living in the world he envisioned.
The image of a manuscript sitting quietly in a family archive while the outside world gradually becomes exactly what it described is one that is difficult to avoid thinking about. Even so, Verne’s situation is not wholly uncommon. Books have always developed at their own speed, influenced by factors unrelated to the caliber of the writing itself. The journey from first draft to completed book can take years or even decades due to a variety of factors, including publisher rejection, the political environment, an author’s personal life, and the sheer amount of research.
Devoney Looser is somewhat knowledgeable about that. The biography of the Porter sisters, Jane and Anna Maria, two nineteenth-century authors who were once praised and then mainly forgotten, was written by the Arizona State University professor over the course of about eighteen years. When she began in 2004, she estimated that she would finish in four or five years. She located over 7,000 letters that were dispersed throughout international archives. She left her young children with their father for month-long research stints, traveled, applied for grants, and watched the pages accumulate—slowly, imperfectly, in fragments. By 2014, she was worn out, stuck, and quietly relieved when a library fire (luckily sparing her files) allowed her to take a two-year break. She was a different writer when she returned, and the book changed as well.
From the outside, that pause appeared to be a failure, but it might have saved the book. With new eyes and a clearer understanding of the narrative she was genuinely attempting to convey, Looser went back to the material. Unexpectedly, she also profited from time itself. Partially digitalized were archives that previously required travel abroad. Online database searches suddenly turned up information about minor historical figures that had baffled her for years. In other words, the lengthy wait had accrued a sort of benefit of its own.
One of the lesser-known facts about delayed publication is that sometimes the writer catches up to themselves, and other times the world catches up to the book. In 1998, Lionel Shriver completed The New Republic, a satirical book about terrorism that was rejected by American publishers. She described her sales record at the time as “poisonous.” Then 9/11 occurred. For years afterward, it seemed improper to treat terrorism lightly, even at that time. Fourteen years after it was finished, the book was finally published in 2012. Once unattainable, the timing had at last created a window.
Maurice in E.M. Forster’s novel waited even longer, but for different reasons. It was written in 1913 and portrayed a same-sex romance at a time when it was both commercially and legally risky in Britain. Over the years, Forster made revisions and showed it to close friends, but he never permitted its publication while he was still living. One year after his passing, in 1971, it eventually made an appearance. Not because the writing wasn’t ready, but rather because the world wasn’t, the finished book had been sitting in a drawer for almost 60 years.
Launch windows are a common concept in the publishing industry. After six weeks of focus, intensive marketing, and a strict promotional cycle, the next title takes over. However, the real-life chronology of a book seldom adheres to that pattern. Herman Melville lived in obscurity for the final decades of his life after writing Moby-Dick and witnessing his reputation fall apart. Billy Budd was still unfinished on his desk when he passed away in 1891. The manuscript was found in 1919 and widely praised by critics when it was published in 1924. Billy Budd might be more well-known today than nearly anything Melville wrote while he was alive.
The cost of writing a book over an extended period of time, both financially and emotionally, is another issue. Looser submitted a travel grant application. When she traveled for research, she brought her retired mother along to take care of the kids. Once, a preschool teacher pulled her aside and gently suggested that leaving her son for a month-long visit to the archive was almost cruel. She sobbed. She had self-doubt. And she continued, writing about thirty pages a year on average in the early years. As a graduate student, she would have found that pace embarrassing, but it began to feel like a real accomplishment.
Literary novelist Roz Morris has written about the unique challenges faced by novels that refuse to be classified as genre fiction—that is, novels that lack a clear template, tropes to adhere to, or boxes to check. The writing process inevitably slows down when each structural choice must be created from the ground up. Finding the shape of the thing itself, which sometimes takes years to glimpse, is more important to the writer than simply finding words. It’s not indolence. It’s more akin to picking up a new language on your own without the aid of a dictionary.
Additionally, writing something over an extended period of time carries a unique risk: you’re writing for a reader who doesn’t yet exist. The audience that her book may have found in 2008 might not be there in the same way in 2022, Looser observed with some discomfort. Readers evolve. The cultural dialogue changes. During a specific wave of feminist literary recovery, a book about two women novelists from the nineteenth century might have fared differently than it did a few years later. Whether that works for or against the book is still up for debate, and Looser, to her credit, doesn’t act as though she knows.
It appears to be true that books that can withstand a ten-year or even a hundred-year wait typically contain something that never goes out of style. The story remains where it is, waiting, while the world around them shifts. From a distance, it can be difficult to avoid feeling that the books that had to fight the hardest to be read have that struggle within them. The weight of the thing, the perseverance required to make it, and the simple fact that it survived were all there, even though they weren’t immediately apparent.
