Last night, curled on the sofa, I read an article I thought I should share with fellow Soulcast favourite book and/or poem debaters.

Disheartened by his own novel's failure to get published, a University professor specialising in Jane Austen conducted an experiment. He sent out the first three chapters of Pride and Prejudice with a plot summary for the rest of the novel to publishing houses across England, changing only names, (e.g. Bennet became Barnet), and places. The rest of the text remained the same, even the famous first line (It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.) He received only refusals, and from these 40 refusals, only one recognised that he had in fact submitted Pride and Prejudice. The rest commented that although his story seemed interesting and original, they had no market for it.

Fair enough - many of the old 'classics' get read today because we know them to be classics. And a novel written in Austen's old english writing style might indeed be difficult for a publisher to mass-market today. But what really shocked me was that only one man recognised Austen's most famous novel when it landed on his desk. These are people in publishing! I.e. shouldn't they have some idea of literature?!  When they asked the publishers about their embarrassing oversight, almost all claimed that these scripts were either read by a clerk who made the decision, or not read at all. What kind of a crazy system is that anyway?! How does anything get published?! And how many modern day classics are turned away by a clerk at the first hurdle?