ABSTRACT
Figure 7.1 The Flammarion edition of Trois Hommes dans un Bateau clearly stages its own position in this debate by using negative critical judgements as an appeal to the reader
Escarpit’s examination of the publishing industry in this seminal French text for research in popular fiction argued that research should focus on relationships which bring writers, books and readers together. This is a process which he saw as psychological and political as well as aesthetic and economic (Bradbury and Wilson 1971, 7). This discussion considers why it has taken over 100 years since the first publication of Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat in 1889 for the text to be categorised as a classic. It focuses on the relationship that Escarpit identified by examining the extremely unusual editorial strategy taken by a paperback translation published by Flammarion in 1990, which chose to use a series of negative critical comments as its cover endorsement (Figure 7.1).
