A novel by C. S. Forrester, who wrote the Hornblower books, has finally been
published, many decades after the author’s death. So, does this sort of thing happen
often? We asked an expert, Jeremy Quarian (and no, we couldn’t work out if his
name were funny or not, either).
Actually, it happens more often than you’d think. Often a publisher feels that the
public would not accept a change of direction for the author. Or perhaps an author is
fed up with his hero and tries to kill him off, as with Sherlock Holmes fighting
Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls, James Bond being poisoned with curare, and
Winnie-the-Pooh OD-ing on honey.
And other authors have done this in unpublished novels too, such as Jane Austen’s
“Sense and Strychnine.”
Other examples are Herman Melville’s unpublished sequel, “Moby Sushi” … Louisa May Allcott’s hotly-anticipated sequel to “Little Women,” “Big Women” … and I can tell you, I‘ve long wanted to get my hands on that … Dostoyevsky’s sequel to “The Brothers Karamazov,” “The Brothers Chuckle” … Shakespeare’s only foray into martial arts, “The Many Knives of Ninja” … “Thomas the Tank Engine Meets Doctor Beeching” … … and finally, of course, there is the long-lost “The Bible Strikes Again,” and its sequel “The Bible – 3D.”
The pop-up version.