Press Coverage Autumn 2005

Dorothy Whipple and her Critics

These days the distinction between high culture and low culture is blurred,' wrote The Oldie magazine provocatively in July. 'Comic books are treated as high art and you can take degrees in pop music. If only there were some kind of test... The editorial staff at Virago books once had the very thing that enabled them to work out whether a prospective novel was too lowbrow for them to publish. They applied a simple test: does a book cross the Whipple Line? If above the Whipple Line, it may be considered. Anything below the Whipple Line goes on the reject pile. Dorothy Whipple (1893-1966) was a successful popular novelist of the Thirties and Forties, who has recently been republished by Persephone Books. Her novels are melodramatic, undisciplined and come to heavy-handed, moralistic conclusions: men are pantomime villains or short-sighted patriarchs; women are usually idealised repositories of good sense or spendthrift harlots. Nevertheless, Mrs Whipple's writing is boldly expressive and has a weirdly addictive quality. She was, in her day, the exemplary middlebrow novelist. We wonder what the modern equivalent might be? Suggestions please.'

Letters of outrage were sent. So far The Oldie has published the following from Charles Lock, Professor of English Literature: 'Your readers have been informed that Whipple's novels are melodramatic etc. To the contrary, they are tightly structured, subtle in tone, sly of wit; their plots are developed at a careful pace, with a certain amplitude of the inexorable that is reminiscent of Hardy (and by no means at his worst). "Weirdly addictive" her writing certainly is: Dorothy Whipple challenges standard views of English fiction in the mid-C20th and, more seriously, puts into question any simple
distinction between high and low culture.' Celia Brayfield also wrote: 'I was amazed to read that your diarist considers Dorothy Whipple's novels melodramatic etc. Surely "understated, well-constructed, subtle but provocatively pre-feminist" would be more like it? An exasperated British film producer of the 1940s complained bitterly of the lack of "bang-up rows" in her books. Whipple was a bestselling novelist of her time, who wrote realistically about ordinary middle-class women, two attributes which guarantee a writer intellectual disdain. Since you ask, her modern equivalent would of course be Joanna Trollope.' And Colin Spencer commented, 'I cannot believe your diarist has read one novel by Dorothy Whipple, for the description of her books as melodramatic etc could not be more inaccurate. Whipple is a social realist of the inter-war bourgeoisie with razor-sharp perception into their foibles and aspirations, her observation of the nuances of human relationships is subtle and it is from that source that her plots derive. Persephone should reap accolades for bringing her back into print.'

Lastly Harriet Evans, fiction publisher at Headline, wrote in The Bookseller's 'Reading for Pleasure' column: 'I read Someone at a Distance a year ago, and re-read it again this year on holiday. I'm so jealous of people who haven't read it before. This is the purest form of storytelling; events happen because of the way that people are rather than a bomb dropping down. I love Persephone Books, the choices are brilliant. I would never have heard of Whipple. She's a classic example of why Persephone Books is so great. It's strange how some writers have endured and others haven't. I think Whipple was neglected just because she has a funny name, and not great titles.