LITMIR.BIZ

       Introduction

      This is my pet book – the book with which I first dipped my toes into the chilly waters of publication.

      Some time after WW2 was over, I returned from the East seeking the grant I would need in order to attend university. I was eventually told that the ex-service grant system was closed.

      So, I took an ill-paid job in an Oxford bookshop. At least I was to be among books, those friendly fruits.

      The official magazine of the book trade was, and still is, The Bookseller. Weekly copies were circulated among the staff. In the fifties, articles were published about the ‘big cheeses’ who comprised the book trade. There was no mention of those slaves, like me, who actually manned the counters and faced the customers.

      I wrote a letter about this state of affairs to the editor of The Bookseller, a Mr Edmond Segrave, saying that ‘the pale face of the bookseller’s assistant was the backbone of English literature.’

      Mr Segrave enjoyed the joke and dropped me a line in return. It was then that I conceived the idea for a series of comic sketches set in an imaginary bookshop.

      Mr Segrave summoned me to his office. I wore a tie for the occasion. He said they had never published, never tried to publish, a comic series. If I would write six of these proposed pieces, he would consider them to see if he found them funny.

      So, that I did. I worked near the celebrated Oxford bookseller, ‘Blackwell’. So, playing on this, I chose the name for my fictitious shop: Brightfount’s.

      Those weekly instalments began to appear in The Bookseller. Publishers, it was reported, were amused.

      ‘Brightfount’s’ had been appearing regularly for about two years when I received a letter from Mr Charles Monteith of Faber and Faber. He asked if I would care to turn my weekly column into a book.

      During the next six months, six other publishers wrote to me with similar proposals. But I could not have had a better publisher than Faber, nor had a more pleasant man to deal with than Monteith. He and I had two items in common; both of us as boys had subscribed to Modern Boy, (which published original ‘Biggles’ stories), and both of us had served in Burma, fighting Japanese forces.

      I have always been confident. But about two weeks before The Brightfount Diaries’ publication day, I suffered the equivalent of stage fright. The public! – What if they don’t laugh?

      Fortunately, they did. My long shambles of a career had begun.

      Brian Aldiss

      Oxford, 2012