Post No. 2—Title Page, Part 1

The Writing of One Novel

The Great Detective at the Crucible of Life

 Or, The Adventure of the Rose of Fire

Copyright © 2012 by Thos. (Thomas) Kent Miller

All rights reserved

  [Note: These posts are sequential, each building on the previous.]
  

Official Portrait of 
Allan Quatermain

—Charles Kerr

Official Portrait of 
Sherlock Holmes

—Sidney Paget

The Title Page, Part One

In my first posting, I called attention to the manner in which Nicholas Meyer and his publisher, E.P. Dutton & Co., chose to present Meyer's first Sherlock Holmes pastiche in 1974 as "Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D. as edited by Nicholas Meyer." This concept was quickly adopted by many other pastiche authors, for example, Loren D. Estleman and Frank Thomas.

When writing my first Holmes/Haggard pastiche, Sherlock Holmes on the Roof of the World; Or, The Adventure of the Wayfaring God, I, too, made the conscious creative decision to present the book as being "From the Journal by Leo Vincey" in emulation of Meyer's "Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of . . . " with myself as "only" the editor.

Furthermore, as Meyer's novel was indisputably an homage to the Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle (as well as a tribute to the Sherlockian scholarship of William Baring-Gould), the simple truth is that I chose to do precisely the same thing—with the difference that ROOF was ALSO an homage to Meyer.

Since ROOF was a slim novel, my "homage opportunities" were limited; so when it came time to finish the sequel to ROOF, I decided to "pull out all the stops" and pile homage on top of homage to the degree that it was possible that I risked being perceived as spoofing the whole Sherlockian pastiche genre. But this decision was made neither quickly nor lightly, as CRUCIBLE gestated from 1988 to 2002—14 years. In the end, I decided that it wasn't bad if some readers thought of the book as a gentle parody . . . as long as they also understood the serious nature of the book, as discussed in the first posting.

All that said, I decided to underscore my efforts of homage starting on the very FIRST page of CRUCIBLE—the title page. When I realized that I was not only tipping my hat to Doyle and Haggard but also to that whole magical period of 19th Century romance publishing, I decided to make the title page extra special. [As an aside, at the end of the nineteenth century, the term “romance” had a completely different meaning than what we are used to today. During that era, the word “romance” conveyed the meaning of “imaginative adventure fiction" as differentiated from "novels," which were realistic depictions of the society and culture of the period. Henry James and Edith Wharton were popular writers of novels, while Rider Haggard, Kipling, and Stevenson were mainly known as writers of romances. Thus Treasure Island, of course, was a romance, as was The War of the Worlds.]

The Title Page

Pick up most any book published during the last 20 years of the Victorian era (give or take a few years) and you will notice on the title page an interesting publishing convention. Centered under the author's name there was invariably (set in very small type) a listing of some of the author's other works. For example, I have in front of me an 1880 printing of Ben-Hur and the title page looks something like this:

BEN-HUR

A TALE OF THE CHRIST

BY

LEW WALLACE

AUTHOR OF "THE FAIR GOD"

Similarly, the 1887 pressing of Jess by Rider Haggard rendered its title page thus:

JESS

BY

H. RIDER HAGGARD

AUTHOR OF

'KING SOLOMON'S MINES'  'SHE, A HISTORY OF ADVENTURE'

ETC.

And, lastly, not to make too fine a point on it, here we have the cover page from an 1891 volume:

THE HAUNTED STATION

AND OTHER STORIES.

BY

HUME NISBET,

AUTHOR OF

"BAIL UP!" "THR DIVERS," "THE BUSHRANGERS'S SWEETHEART,"

"THE JOLLY ROGER," "THE SAVAGE QUEEN," &c., &c..

So when it came time to fashion a title page for CRUCIBLE, nothing at all would do except something that reflected the era.

BUT there was more! After all, not only was CRUCIBLE set down by Dr. Watson, but the nature of what he was recording was far different than any ordinary Sherlock Holmes adventure. It was the record of an heretofore untold adventure by the great Allan Quatermain. In fact, it was a tale told by Quatermain and Watson's role was mainly that of a stenographer. Thus there was no getting away from the fact that my title page would "one-up" Meyer's and necessarily have two authors—Allan Quatermain and John H. Watson, M.D—as well as list myself as editor. Of course the vast irony here is that whereas The Seven-Per-Cent Solution sported one nonexistent fictional author on its formal title page, my book's title page would list two nonexistent fictional authors, plus me. How cool was that?

When you added it all up, all the parameters and intentions and tributes and emulation that needed to be contained on the very first page—the title page—of The Great Detective at the Crucible of Life; Or, The Adventure of the Rose of Fire, this is what you got:

I was rather proud of myself. I was not aware that anyone else had had the temerity—essentially out of love—to buck modern publishing conventions to such a degree:

•    A long title

•    A long subtitle

•    Two nonexistent authors

•    Six lines of supplemental text of a bibliographical nature that was briefly in vogue a whole century and a quarter ago. By 1910, the convention had largely disappeared from title pages.

I hope it should be clear now that I wrote and crafted CRUCIBLE out of love. As I said in the first post, I wrote CRUCIBLE "slowly and carefully and made a multitude of conscious, very deliberate decisions that may or may not have been noticed by readers." However, frankly—except for a dozen or so careful readers who reviewed the book well or e-mailed me—much of my "cleverness" was neither noticed nor appreciated—not even by the presumably literate book reviewer for Publishers Weekly, who had absolutely no clue of what I was attempting and dismissed the book outright.

Posting No. 3 will continue this discussion of the title page by focusing on the novel's subtitle, ". . . . the Rose of Fire". I'll say a few words about Arthur Machen's short novel The Great Return, wherein the phrase appeared, explaining why the story and the phrase are important to me.

Find used copies of CRUCIBLE at https://www.amazon.com/Great-Detective-Crucible-Life/dp/0809500507 . 

Comments are appreciated; thank you!

Formal Notice: All images, quotations, and video/audio clips used in this blog and in its individual posts are used either with permissions from the copyright holders or through exercise of the doctrine of Fair Use as described in U.S. copyright law, or are in the public domain. If any true copyright holder (whether person[s] or organization) wishes an image or quotation or clip to be removed from this blog and/or its individual posts, please send a note with a clear request and explanation to eely84232@mypacks.net and your request will be gladly complied with as quickly as practical.