The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure Paperback by C. D. Rose

Product Details

• Publisher: Melville House (2015-10-26)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 208 pages
• ISBN-13: 9781612194622
• Item Weight: 213.19 grams
• Dimensions: 19.3 x 13.46 x 1.27 cm

A darkly comic, satirical reference book about writers who never made it into the literary canon

A signal event of literary scholarship, The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure compiles the biographies of history’s most notable cases of a complete lack of literary success. As such, it is the world’s leading authority on the subject.

Compiled in one volume by C. D. Rose, a well-educated person universally acknowledged in parts of England as the world’s pre-eminent expert on inexpert writers, the book culls its information from lost or otherwise ignored archives scattered around the globe, as well as the occasional dustbin.

The dictionary amounts to a monumental accomplishment: the definitive appreciation of history’s least accomplished writers. Thus immortalized beyond deserving and rescued from hard-earned obscurity, the authors presented in this historic volume comprise a who’s who of the talentless and deluded, their stories timeless litanies of abject psychosis, misapplication, and delinquency.

It is, in short, a treasure.

About the Author

C.D. Rose is the author of five books including We Live Here Now, The Blind Accordionist, and Who’s Who When Everyone is Someone Else. He was awarded The Goldsmiths Prize in 2025. He currently teaches at the University of Birmingham in Birmingham, England.