In August 2019 I wrote about an unusual interwar novel, Philip Owens’ Picture of Nobody (1936). As I noted, in this ‘Shakespeare is recreated as an impoverished young poet in Nineteen Thirties London. It is not exactly a reincarnation or timeslip fantasy – the book simply takes the character, story and work of the 16th century playwright and reframes them in a setting over three hundred years later.’ Readers contributed helpful information about the author, and I posted further on this in a follow-up note, ‘Picture of Somebody’.
Now, the independent bookseller McNally Jackson, has announced pre-orders for a new edition of the book, due out in April, with a foreword by Allen Bratton. This includes an encomium by David Tibet: ‘Truly unlike any other book I have read. Shakespeare and AntiShakespeare, a timeslipping tragicomedy of errors . . . a masterpiece, and a very strange one too.’
The publisher describes it as: ‘A comic yet credible reimagining of the milieu of Elizabethan London in modernist dress, it transcends its premise to provide a poignant portrait, of a Shakespearean mind coming to grips with the twentieth century. Populated by an assortment of characters familiar from Will's life and writing both, it is as much a loving parody as a grim prophecy regarding the fate of genius in "interesting times." ‘
The book is very uncommon in its original edition, so it's good to see this audacious and inventive work rediscovered and newly available, a fitting tribute to Philip Owens' literary legacy.
(Mark Valentine)
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