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Lessing is more for HC

19.10.07 Joel Rickett

Harper Perennial has chosen six of Doris Lessing's classic novels to re-issue after receiving a flood of international orders for the new Nobel laureate's works.

The Golden Notebook and The Good Terrorist have already gone to print with new cover styles and Nobel branding. They will be followed shortly by: The Grass is Singing; The Fifth Child; Love, Again; and Memoirs of a Survivor, all in the new livery at £7.99 or £8.99. Perennial is also pushing her two autobiographies, Walking in the Shade and Under My Skin, as well as ensuring that her full 54-title backlist is in print.

Lessing was the surprise choice for the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2007, with the Swedish Academy describing her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".

Her most recent novel, The Cleft, was published by Fourth Estate on 2nd January and has sold fewer than 1,500 copies through Nielsen BookScan UK. Sales of her entire backlist have levelled out at around 3,000 copies a year in the UK; the examples of J M Coetzee and Orhan Pamuk suggests this will increase by up to 70% after the Nobel win.

Perennial publishing director Paul Baggaley said that while Lessing's body of work was "much-loved" by different generations, the publisher had to guide new Lessing readers. "She has fiction, sci-fi, memoirs . . . we need to tell people which to concentrate on," he said. "We'd love to get more people reading her." He added that response from international distributors had been instant, with orders pouring in from continental Europe and beyond.

At nearly 88, Lessing is the oldest person to receive the prize. Alastair Niven, president of English PEN, said: "Doris Lessing's contribution to the development of the modern novel is unique, placing women at the centre of our concerns but constantly responding to the tenor of the times. She is bold, innovative and sensory, with a political conscience that should constantly perturb us."

Victoria Barnsley, c.e.o. and publisher of HC UK, added: "Doris has been at the heart of HarperCollins literary output for almost 20 years and I'm delighted that her enormous contribution to literary life has been so justly rewarded."

HarperCollins Joel Rickett Prize Doris Lessing

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