Forgotten 20th-Century Classic Books

Thank you for compiling this list of forgotten 20th-century classic books. It’s a great selection. What were your criteria, when putting together the list?

Each of these ‘forgotten’ classics are wonderfully written and have stood the test of time and place. Some of them have become lifelong friends and I re-read them, or parts of them, again and again. They address those universally relevant topics we all harp on about, but what makes them truly powerful is the way they catapult modern readers back in time while simultaneously introducing new ways of writing or thinking, whether they were created back in 1908 in New York or enjoyed in modern times in an indie bookstore in London. Inside each one of these covers is a message or a style, or a place or a setting, which is meaningful to me as an individual, but also as a 21st-century citizen. They chart my own life and literary tastes, and whenever I get the chance to talk to others about them, I delight in discovering the bits I missed the first few times around.

Shall we talk about your first recommendation? This is The Fly on the Wheel by Katherine Cecil Thurston, first published in 1908. Your publishing house, Manderley Press, published a new edition with an introduction by Megan Nolan. Perhaps you’d introduce us to the book first.

The Fly on the Wheel was an instant bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic when it was first published in 1908. Katherine Cecil Thurston was already a popular and successful writer of short stories, political thrillers and novels at this point in her career and had been propelled to literary fame and fortune in 1904 with her wildly successful book John Chilcote, MP. This early success earned her an avid following and allowed her to experiment with more radical subject matters and characters in subsequent books, including gambling, suicide, adultery and a cross-dressing female heroine. She was ahead of her time in so many ways.

I had an old Virago edition of The Fly on the Wheel at home. A green Virago spine having been the ultimate arbiter of an underappreciated classic in our household. But it was only after setting up Manderley Press that I began to look afresh at some of the books I’d carted around without actually ever reading. In particular, I’m drawn to stories set in places I’ve travelled to or spent time in, and was aware of the village of Ardmore in Ireland because my mother-in-law grew up there. Cecil Thurston was originally from Cork, but had a summer house in Ardmore where she wrote sections of The Fly on the Wheel.

I was hooked after discovering this and started to examine more closely the places featured in the book, as well as its main setting – the Irish city of Waterford. It just so happened that at the same time my sister lived in the flat below an author who was also from Waterford, Megan Nolan. There were some tantalising parallels between both writers, and a new project fell effortlessly into place: Megan’s searing debut novel – Acts of Desperation – was the ideal contemporary connection I was looking for. She was perfectly placed to write a new introduction to Cecil Thurston’s book, and to re-examine tragic young love through a twenty-first century lens, with equally devastating doses of passion and drama. And all linked by the setting of Waterford. Which, if you have not yet had the pleasure of visiting, I would wholeheartedly recommend.

Why does it deserve re-reading in 2025?

To find two authors, separated by over a century but linked through setting, and age, and talent, is quite simply, irresistible. These connections don’t feel laboured; rather the opposite – to identify a universally appealing genre (in this case, the tragic love story) and to be able to highlight themes from a book over a hundred years after publication to a modern classic like Acts of Desperation feels more like literary serendipity. This is just one of the many reasons it deserves a re-read in 2025.

And also, back at the start of this particular publishing journey, I was keen for a new edition that would attract new readers. I deliberately wanted to shed any fusty cover design or old-fashioned imagery, and so commissioning another contemporary Waterfordonian to help bring this classic back to life – the extremely talented Irish illustrator Kathi Burke. She designed the front cover of the book, referencing the purple of the original 1908 edition, and on the endpapers, the watchful, judging eyes of society depicted as the cobblestones of Lady Lane where the book is set.

“Each of these ‘forgotten’ classics are wonderfully written and have stood the test of time and place”

Together, Megan and Kathi—who it turns out were both at school together—have reinvigorated an Irish classic that had been almost entirely forgotten, and just in time to coincide with renewed interest in the author’s life, which was almost as unbelievably dramatic as this novel of hers. The Fly on the Wheel is as thrilling, dramatic and sensationalist now as it was back at the turn of the nineteenth century. And, spoiler alert, it has become one of Cecil Thurston’s best-known works, perhaps because of the uncanny similarities between the demise of Isabel, its protagonist, and the author’s own untimely death just a few years following its publication, aged just 36.

How do you decide what texts you should republish?

We republish new editions of books that for one reason or another have disappeared from shelves. I like to think of it as seeking out and rediscovering literary treasures, most of which are out of print, and some of which have been forgotten about altogether. There is a theme which unites all the texts on our list: each one was deeply inspired by a building, a place or a landmark. For most of my life I’ve been fascinated by the links between location and history, and also the connections between text and images, and have always found that the most powerful way to reach back in time and experience the past is by visiting historical sites, and reading novels set in and inspired by specific places and events. If you can combine these scenarios – reading an old forgotten classic in the old house it was written or set in – that’s practically time travel in my book.

Manderley Press is the direct result of my interest in all of the above: I find titles that have been created in and inspired by houses or cities, or any place that has been meaningful to an author, even if it’s imaginary—for example, The Armourer’s House by Rosemary Sutcliff, which is set on the banks of the River Thames in Tudor times—and give them a new introduction and a new cover by contemporary writers and artists with links to the places at the heart of each book. As a publisher, this approach affords me the freedom to republish a wide range of books – literary novels, memoirs, diaries, letters, children’s books or travel guides – and to pull a natural thread between each one.

Next you’ve selected The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd, first published in 1977 and set in 1903. Tell us more.

When I first moved to London in 1999, I started working at Daunt Books. It was a magical bookish dream come true, where I met some of my firmest friends and cut my teeth as bookseller. Every day was spent tidying, organising, unboxing, rearranging, locating and selling books of every kind, new and old. Readers were everywhere: behind the counter and as customers too. The Ginger Tree was recommended to me by a regular customer – in fact it was physically pressed into my hands with urgency and a command to read it immediately. I was transfixed instantly. This book is heartbreaking, leading the reader along with its protagonist to the brink of emotional calamity, all the while introducing a particular historical period in such sensitive depth and detail that you cannot help but be inspired to find out more.

It might have been this book that solidified my interest in Japan too… It was a strange jump from this to new favourites by Haruki Murakami, or even Banana Yoshimoto, but the joy of working in a travel bookshop like Daunt Books in a pre-Google era, was the handy grouping of titles organised geographically.

I still treasure my original and rather elegant cream-bound Eland edition of The Ginger Tree. Eland’s entire list is very carefully curated and beautifully produced too. So not only is The Ginger Tree a page-turner, a forgotten classic and a personal literary awakening, it marks for me a particular point in my own life when I was at the start of my bookselling and publishing career, living in London for the first time, slightly out of place, hopelessly romantic, and revelling in a whole new world of books inspired by places and historical events.

Your third book recommendation is The Girl with the White Flag by Tomiko Higa. An English translation by Dorothy Britton was published in 1991. I believe it is a memoir based on Tomiko Higa’s own experiences—is that right? Could you talk us through it?

So I’ve already hinted at my fascination with Japan at this time, and looking back this was no doubt helped by a trip I made at the turn of the millennium, to a tiny Japanese island called Izena, off mainland Okinawa. I was visiting a boyfriend who was more of a Herman Hesse and a Voltaire fan, but while he was out teaching, I read up on the history of Okinawa. The appalling legacy of the Second World War is strong there, even today, and the horror of conflict, again, hard to understand or access in a history book or via a dry military one-sided account of a battle.

Back at home in London, at work in the bookshop, I was able to order The Girl with the White Flag from a Japanese publisher, Kodansha. This small book is a powerful memoir – a devastating account of the survival of a small child in the middle of one of the most violent and relentless battles of the twentieth century, which has to be read to be believed. In fact, it should be read and re-read by all of us, as a reminder that children continue to be the very worst victims of war.

It’s a book originally written for children, I think? Will adult readers appreciate it also?

I’m pretty sure most adult readers still enjoy many so-called children’s books. I, for one, am a huge fan of dipping between these categories. In fact, a blurring of them is essential.

While I understand the logic of separating out books for younger readers from adult shelves, this is one of those titles that can be enjoyed or at least appreciated by anyone. Some parts are extremely harrowing. As a child I loved classic children’s novels set in wartime, for example The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier, although I suppose themes of survival, resilience and hope teased out of this particular horror were less real to me until I discovered Anne Frank’s diaries, or Night by Elie Wiesel.

The power of a personal account is undeniable, and this book recounts Tomiko Higa’s experiences during the Battle of Okinawa from a unique perspective. She is separated from her family and navigates the devastation and chaos alone, witnessing unimaginable horrors, but also kindness and tenderness, which ultimately help her to survive. The title of the book refers to a moment captured in a photo, and reproduced on the front cover, when she walks through a battlefield holding a white flag.

Tomiko thus became a symbol of innocence and surrender for a whole nation, and a specific generation too; this account of her survival despite all the odds is a wartime classic for children and adults.

Let’s talk next about Minty Alley by C.L.R James. First published in 1936, it was recently republished by Penguin. Tell us more.

I think there’s a moment in every publisher’s life when you find a book that you wish you’d published. For me this is definitely Minty Alley, written by C.L.R. James in the late 1920s, and undiscovered by many despite various editions remaining in print ever since.

I can remember a friend recommending the book to me and having no idea who the author was or what the novel was about, and then having my eyes opened in the best possible way. This novel is one of those books that reaffirms your understanding of what it is to be human, of what it means to be part of a community and to move from the fringes to the centre of the action. It would make for a wonderful film adaptation.

To discover a powerful modern classic as an adult is an utter privilege. While I would have loved to include this book on the Manderley Press list, a fantastic new edition was recently published by Penguin as part of a series of titles celebrating Black Britain, introduced by Bernardine Evaristo and beautifully illustrated by Joy Yamusangie. It’s a glorious book, inside and out.

Finally, that brings us to Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker. This 1980 novel previously appeared on Five Books when Max Porter declared it one of the books that has shaped him as a writer. It’s written in an imagined vernacular. Can you say more?

Ah, I’m delighted to hear that Max Porter loved this too. Riddley Walker is one of those books that awoke in me a total fascination with dystopian and post-apocalyptic titles. It is set a couple of thousand years in the future, following a nuclear war, and is written in an imagined dialect that has evolved after the collapse of civilisation. The main character, Riddley, is the narrator and his account of discovering and trying to make sense of an attempt to recreate a powerful weapon from an earlier time makes for a riveting read. That’s the concept from which Hoban starts and strangely it became a literary pivot for me, linking to the genres I enjoy the most, and to other authors and books in completely alternate styles which have marked important points in my career.

I grew up in North Yorkshire in the 1980s, vaguely obsessed with preparing for a post-nuclear event after mistakenly using a birthday book token as a child to buy what I thought was a sequel to The Snowman, but which turned out to be When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs—whose very first, and very different, children’s books we’ll be publishing this summer. I was hooked.

Oh yes, that’s quite a tonal shift.

Subsequently I was drawn to books like Stephen King’s The Stand, and later, the 1984 BBC film Threads, cementing my fascination with this genre. Each of these is in my eyes a classic as well and paved the way for my future devouring of books like Rosa Rankin-Gee’s Dreamland, which in itself is a connection to Manderley Press: Rosa also wrote the staggeringly good introduction to our wartime adventure about a cow-napping in the Channel Islands, inspired by a true story.

I’m glad you mentioned Rosa. We spoke to her quite recently about the best near-future dystopias. She mentioned one of my personal favourites, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.

There’s also Appointment with Venus by Jerrard Tickell, not to mention works by Margaret Atwood, David Nicholls, Kazuo Ishiguro and my new favourite, Oana Aristide. Her novel Under the Blue is surely a classic in the making.

Dystopian or post-apocalyptic fiction is very popular. But Riddley Walker feels quite unique, do you agree?

I’ve certainly never read anything before or since this novel that could be placed in the same category. So yes, I would agree it is entirely unique – a gritty classic which marks its own territory within the boundaries of other dystopian and post-apocalyptic classics, such as 1984, Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange or even The Road.

We, as readers, peer into a future where societal collapse is marked by linguistic decay, and just as the characters carve a new, hard life in a sort of post-nuclear Iron Age Britain, we are made to grapple and toil with a new vernacular. Luckily Hoban offers us hints to locate ourselves – or at least hold on to aspects of a familiar aspects of human existence – in recreated lost myths, religious experiences, cultural references and that age-old favourite: storytelling. The result is an immersive literary experience.

A friend’s mum gave me this book as a teenager, and I read it on holiday on the beach in the south of France. I would look up from the horror and chaos of the pages every now and again, shocked by the carefree splashing of nearby kids, and their joyous sandcastles. And even now, whenever I reread it, I find something else to ponder and then research or connect to in another book – it is as though Hoban set out to future-proof this novel and the result is such an enduring introspective classic, one cannot help but think he must have actually time-travelled in order to conjure up Riddley and his world so convincingly.

What new editions will you be publishing next?

Coming up this spring we are publishing a brand-new collection of Mary Shelley’s work, all written during, and inspired by the short yet influential time she spent living in the historic literary city of Bath. We commissioned Fiona Sampson, an acclaimed biographer of Mary Shelley to introduce the book, which features Mary’s journals and letters, as well as the chapter of Frankenstein which she penned in Bath, and three short stories written much later, but informed by her lived experiences there in 1816 and 1817.

This is the first time we’ve created a book from scratch rather than republishing a classic, so it’s been thrilling to see everything come together so beautifully. It has a wonderfully powerful front cover by Eleanor Macnair, who lives close to Bath and created a unique portrait of Mary set against a backdrop of the city, rendered entirely in play-doh and inspired by more demure paintings of the author in the National Portrait Gallery. The result is quite dramatic, but also strikingly modern too: there is no doubt that Mary Shelley’s work was ground-breaking in her own lifetime, so to discover that it is just as relevant, page-turning and inspirational over two hundred years later is rather motivating. We can’t wait to release this one into the wild.

Later in April we are releasing a new edition of Washington Square by Henry James, this time with an introduction by Colm Tóibín. It’s a great time to be involved in heritage publishing, and I’m not alone in discovering some truly fabulous gems to polish up and pop back on shelves. But this feels like a very special classic to revive, and we were rather starstruck when Colm agreed to write a new essay to showcase the book. He is an expert in the life and works of Henry James, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his novel about James’s life, The Master, so was perfectly placed to take a fresh look at this already well-loved classic.

After that we have Summer releases scheduled for a new edition of Rosemary Sutcliff’s YA book Sun Horse, Moon Horse and a children’s book which was written and illustrated by Raymond Briggs, and inspired by his own childhood adventures in Wimbledon. Following this in the Autumn, we will republish a classic ghost story for adults by Joan Aiken. The Haunting of Lamb House will be ready right in time for Halloween so prepare to be chilled—and thrilled.