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22 hours ago, Shake me up Judy said:

For a time he was the U.K.s best selling author. That's not necessarily a sign of quality though, as I'm sure we all know.

Agreed but most of his books are genuinely awful. I’ve got most of them but can never read more than a few chapters. It must have been different times when he ended up in that position. I’ve always put his likely success down to the fact that he probably networked in theatrical circles and that’s how he got his move into the US.

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22 hours ago, Max Power said:

The only thing that I really know about Hall Caine is that he wrote 'The Manxman' oh, and he was a close friend of a suspect in the Jack the Ripper case!

 Bram Stoker dedicated Dracula to him. 

He was the best selling author of his day, but he's too melodramatic and lacking in humour for modern tastes.

Culture tends to distill down to one or two examples of an ouvere over time mids-60s psyche-pop will be represented only by SGT Pepper in a decade or so and only academics and people obsessed with that time will listen to Forever Changes, Odyssey and Oracle or Their Satanic Majesties. Agatha Christie is constantly being remade but Naigo Marsh and Dorothy L Sayers etc no so much.

Dickens trumps Caine everyday because he wrote memorable characters - that are good for filming and as user names on Internet Forums. 

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12 hours ago, Cueey Lewis And The News said:

Agreed but most of his books are genuinely awful. I’ve got most of them but can never read more than a few chapters. It must have been different times when he ended up in that position. I’ve always put his likely success down to the fact that he probably networked in theatrical circles and that’s how he got his move into the US.

An industry plant in modern terms? Connections might get your first novel published, it might get it reviewed in the right place and sell a few copies but you've still got to chime with audiences to get sustained success. 

Victorians were weird is the best explanation. 

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7 minutes ago, Declan said:

Culture tends to distill down to one or two examples of an ouvere over time mids-60s psyche-pop will be represented only by SGT Pepper in a decade or so

Nonsense!   Maybe we have a different definition of psyche-pop…but surely it would be SF Sorrow - or any Yardbirds singles compilation.  🙂

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10 minutes ago, Jarndyce said:

Nonsense!   Maybe we have a different definition of psyche-pop…but surely it would be SF Sorrow - or any Yardbirds singles compilation.  🙂

SF Sorrow would meet the definition and is a great album. But it's already forgotten by the zeitgeist. 

I was trying to think of an reconisable genre term so I changed chamber-pop to psyche-pop, so The Yardbirds weren't really what I was thinking about. I doubt they'll be remembered in twenty years other than as a footnote in the Led Zep story who'll be token representative of seventies hard rock.  

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21 minutes ago, Declan said:

I was trying to think of an reconisable genre term so I changed chamber-pop to psyche-pop

The Beatles (at that point) were hippies, acid, facial hair, Afghan waistcoats.   Psych-pop should be about stripy strides, speed and shades - with a loophole for Syd Barrett, of course. 😎

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It's pointless arguing sub-sub-genre definitions. We all have our own. I came accross this earlier  - https://www.albumoftheyear.org/list/555-pastes-50-best-post-punk-albums-of-all-time/  I'm not sure how a record released in Feb 1977 could be the best post-punk lp of all-time and The Smiths's classic rock disaster the second. 

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