Product details
- ISBN 9780712355834
- Dimensions: 130 x 200mm
- Publication Date: 14 Oct 2025
- Publisher: British Library Publishing
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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The literary life isn't just about curling up with a good book and a cuppa, it's also a world where Lord Byron calls John Keats' work "p**s-a-bed poetry", spaniels eat the first drafts of masterpieces and gung-ho Ben Jonson shows he's more than happy to prove the sword is mightier than the pen.
The Book of Literary Scandals shows that behind the jaunty covers and feelgood memoirs is a dingier world of personal insults, physical blows, and publishing errors. It's one where books suffer bad endings and libraries impose bizarre sanctions. It's a story of writers behaving badly since Sophocles clashed quills with Euripedes, defacing books, abandoning spouses, and regretting choosing Dylan Thomas to be the Best Man at their wedding. Elsewhere it looks at hot take reviews, sniffy dedications, publishers' rejection letters, literary friendships gone sour and why you should never lick a book with a green cover.
Alex Johnson is the author of titles about art, music, shed, and books on books including for the British Library, A Book of Book Lists (2017), Edward Lead and the Pussycat: Famous Writers and Their Pets (2019), How to Give Your Child a Lifelong Love of Reading (2020), and The Book Lover's Almanac (2023).
