Today’s blog will be brief, because no one wants to dwell too long on a rejection. But, so you know you are not alone, here are some rejections that other writers have received.
Shakespeare’s name, you may depend on it, will go down. He has no invention as to stories, none whatever. —Lord Byron (1814)
A huge dose of hyperbolical slang, maudlin sentimentalism and tragic-comic bubble and squeak. —William Harrison Ainsworth, New Monthly Magazine, review of Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1851)
The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the “curiosity” level. —The Diary of Anne Frank
A gross trifling with every fine word. —Springfield Republican, review of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
Ralph Waldo Emerson [is] a hoary-headed and toothless baboon. —Thomas Carlyle, Collected Works (1871)
I am sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just do not know how to use the English language.
—San Francisco Examiner, rejection letter to Kipling (1889)
It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA. —Animal Farm by George Orwell
We fancy that any child might be more puzzled than enchanted by this stiff, silly, overwrought story. —Children’s Books’ review of Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carrol (1865)
And I’ll close with one I personally received from an editor at one of the big five publishers in New York for the first book I wrote. In part, it said, “Totally unrealistic. As an example, you have the man talking to his computer.”
If you’ve received an equally rediculous rejection, please leave a comment and share the rejection with us Thanks.
Jim