Grandmother's Unpublished Novel

[nchristie]

I recently discovered my grandmother (who I never met because she died too young) had written most of a novel and some short stories in the 1960s shortly before she died. I found her writing really captivating, total page turners. Should I try to find a publisher for them? Should I self publish them online? Am I just a bit deluded because she was my grandmother?

How exciting! Do you think you could complete the novel yourself?

Ooh! I don’t know but how exciting!

I’d definitely send it off I think.

I'm going to check my mum doesn't have any other secret stash of granny's papers - I can't believe she was just typing without a game plan, so if I can find some notes giving a clue on the direction she was planning that could help. Also might see if my mum has a good guess at where it might have gone to next, she might be a bit more in tune with what her mum might have been thinking than me. I'm not sure I can emulate the style either. But yeah, I might try.

Just keep them for the family. No publisher is going to be interested in a novel by someone who is no longer with us.

You might try sending the short stories to a suitable magazine for a start. An incomplete novel would be hard to place.

I’d say that’s a novel, and a story in itself! I’m seeing a novel/film about a woman working on her grandma’s unfinished novel and how it affects her relationship with her mum etc etc. Go for it! Sounds great - and exactly the sort of thing that’s so unique it has a PR hook built in

I think that's fair in most cases, unless it's astonishing, or by someone famous, or has some very enticing story. I mean, yes, John Kennedy O'Toole's Confederacy of Dunces was published posthumously, by his mother more or less ambushing Walker Percy with the MS, but despite the fact that it wasn't published, it had been taken seriously during his lifetime, to the point of having gone through several revisions with an editor at Simon and Schuster.

How objective are you being about the work, OP?

It's very hard to know how objective I am really. I read quite widely, so I feel like I know interesting work when I see it. I think the writing is broadly sound, but has some stylistic awkwardness that might be better to edit out. The thing which grabbed me was the story captures the moment womens' lives moved from being dictated by how well they married to how well they were educated - the protagonist is very preoccupied with whether she wants to be husband hunting in an almost regency era way, or whether she wants to go to university.

It's not going to cost a fortune to self-publish any novel and although it is not likely to become a best-seller, you will have the pleasure of seeing a copy on your bookshelf. Self-publishing isn't difficult - though you do have to find a decent cover artist and learn your way round Amazon's 'rules' ;)
The hardest part will be transcribing her writings onto a computer.

I self-published my father's wartime memoir (e-book and paperback) and it was picked up by several local libraries as well as being bought by family members and friends. It's lovely to think his words are still being read.

Sounds fascinating! Maybe you could interweave it with historical information about society at the time to pad it out and make it more meaty? I'd love to read it, especially if it was doubly informative about that era with factual stuff, maybe other anecdotes you could find written by women at the time?

Before you start this process, you need to work out who owns the copyright in the novel because no publisher will touch it unless you can prove you own it.

Copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years.

If her will was silent about copyright (most likely if she wasn't a commercial writer or artist), then either the copyright will belong to whoever she left the physical novel to or it will fall into the residuary estate.

Start with her will and estate. If your mother was the only child of your grandmother, it is very unlikely to be a problem. If however your mother was one of several children, sort it out before you start because there could be competing claims.

More about copyright on death here:

https://www.dacs.org.uk/advice/articles/copyright-after-you-die