The male ghost story writers did eventually catch up with the females, but only just. Out of my best twenty-four (there is not room to include all of them in this book), the final score was thirteen to the men and eleven to the women. These figures were intriguing and I’ll tell you why. Many people have been fascinated and perplexed by the failure of women to reach the top rank in two of the three major creative arts, music and painting. With writing it is different. Ever since the Brontës and Jane Austen got them going there have been plenty of fine women novelists around. But this is not true of music or of painting and sculpture. In the whole of history there has never been a woman musical composer anywhere near the top rank. There hasn’t really been one in painting or sculpture either. The greatest woman painter was probably Popova, followed by two other Russians, Goncharova and Exter. There was also Mary Cassatt, Barbara Hepworth and possibly Georgia O’Keefe. But none of them could hold a candle to the huge mass of great male names in painting, from Dürer to Picasso.
But to go back to women as writers. For about a hundred and thirty years they have been producing good novels, even some great ones. But they don’t seem to be able to write plays or top-rate short stories. I don’t think a woman has ever written a classic play. And as for short stories – no, not really. By this I mean great short stories. The greatest twenty-five short stories ever written (if it were possible to agree on which they were) might conceivably include one by Katherine Mansfield, one by Willa Cather and one by Shirley Jackson. But that would be all. The score would be twenty-two to three in favour of the men.
And yet – and here is the interesting thing – ghost stories, at least the kind I am talking about, are short stories. And in that particular and very special category the women run the men very close indeed, a lot closer even than in the novel, with the score at thirteen to the men and eleven to the women. But it is the women who have written some of the very best ones.
So perhaps there is something after all in the theory that women have an unusual flair for writing about the supernatural. Who can forget Shirley Jackson’s marvellous story, The Lottery? Admittedly it isn’t a ghost story. But it deals with the same sort of eerie and unfathomable events and does it in a manner I have never seen matched by any male short story writer.
I have no doubts at all where women stand when it comes to one of the most important facets of all creative literature. I mean of course children’s books. You may scream all you like when you read that statement, and I do not say it because I sometimes write children’s books myself. I say it because I am convinced that they are one of the most important. All other forms of fiction are written purely to divert and entertain the adult mind. Children’s books must also divert and entertain, but they do something else at the same time. They actually teach a child the habit of reading. They teach him to be literate, they teach him vocabulary and nowadays they teach him that there can be better ways of passing the time than watching television.
The manner in which children’s books are virtually ignored by literary magazines, by Sunday newspaper reviewers and by the so-called literary establishment in general is scandalous. Biographies are given the most attention of all, then adult novels, then poetry. Children’s books are only noticed every now and again. And yet – now listen carefully please – and yet, let any of these high-blown authors or critics attempt to write a children’s book, I mean a fine children’s book that children will fall in love with and which will endure through the years, and he will almost certainly fail.
I am fairly sure that it is more difficult to write a fine and enduring children’s book than a fine and enduring novel. My reason for making this contentious statement is as follows. How many adult novels are written every year that will still be read widely twenty years later? Probably about half a dozen. How many children’s books are written every year that will still be read widely and avidly twenty years later? Possibly only one.
You may argue that the big writers do not bother even to try to write children’s books. You would be wrong. Most of them have tried. Quite a long time ago, a New York publisher called Crowell-Collier had what they thought was a brilliant idea. They decided to invite all the most celebrated writers in the English speaking world to write a children’s story. They would tempt them with a high fee. They would then combine all the results in one volume and they’d have a classic on their hands.
The invitations went out, and because of the high fee and the relative shortness of the task, all the writers accepted. These were big names, mind you, famous novelists, so-called giants of the literary world. I won’t mention who they were but you would know them all.
The stories came in. I saw each one of them. Only one writer, Robert Graves, had any conception of how to write for children. The rest of the stories were guaranteed to anaesthetize in two minutes flat any unfortunate child who got hold of them. They were unpublishable. The project was abandoned and the publishers lost a good deal of money.
When it comes to writing classic children’s books, women triumph over the men. They are pretty good at novels, they are better still at
