Getting published has never been easy. Even the most celebrated authors once faced rejection after rejection. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter was turned down by a dozen publishing houses before one finally took a chance. Anne Frank’s diary was dismissed by fifteen publishers before it reached the world. Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind met with thirty-eight rejections, and Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was rejected an astonishing 121 times before becoming a classic beloved by millions. The lesson, we are told, is persistence and, above all, patience.
But in the early years of the 20th century, one little-known writer, when faced with resistance from her publisher, decided to act in a shocking manner. Edith Allonby, a schoolteacher from Lancaster, published two strange and ambitious novels at the beginning of the 20th century. Her fiction was suffused with allegory, spiritual yearning, and cosmic settings. But her works gained little notice. In 1905, convinced that her writing would never be appreciated during her lifetime, she swallowed poison in the hope that her death would ensure her third novel received the attention she believed it deserved.
Credit: Abebooks
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