Abstract
NOT MANY authors are spared long enough to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of their first ‘bestseller’ but last month J B Priestley could sit back and reflect upon the huge success of his picaresque novel, The good companions, first published 22nd July 1929. At first it achieved a modest but steady sale, seven thousand five hundred copies were sold by the end of the month, but from then onwards it took off in no uncertain fashion; at the height of the Christmas season his publishers, who had tentatively printed ten thousand copies originally, were sending out some five thousand a day. A year after publication it was still selling over one thousand copies a week at half a guinea a time. No wonder Priestley himself described it thirty years later as ‘this giant jackpot, this golden gusher, this genie out of the bottle’.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callSimilar Papers
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
