The lost art of editing

The long, boozy lunches and smoke-filled parties are now part of publishing’s past, but has rigorous line-by-line editing of books been lost too, a casualty of the demands of sales and publicity?

A meeting of the board of directors at Faber, March 1944. From left to right TS Eliot, Morley Kennedy, Geoffrey Faber, WJ Crawley, Miss CB Sheldon and Richard de la Mare. Photograph: Picture Post/Felix Mann and Kurt Hutton/Getty Images

Alex Clark

Reach for the current issue of Private Eye and you will find “Bookworm”, the anonymous author of the magazine’s Books & Bookmen column, indulging his or her fondness for schadenfreude by rounding up the worst reviews of this season’s crop of new books. The writers mentioned will no doubt simply shrug – or perhaps grimace – to have readers’ attention drawn to less than ecstatic comments, especially when numerous glowing reviews are ignored. But “Bookworm” also has a few sharp words for those whose work is undertaken outside the glare of publicity: “it’s not only the authors who will and should wince on reading these words. The editors . . . are responsible as well, for being too indolent, timid or unobservant, if the reviewers are right. But will pain spur them to remember that editors are supposed to edit?”       …read more