Emma, I now think Peter Ackroyd is a complete and utter hero. Especially having read some of the interviews he has given, in which he comes across as a delightful mix of barking mad, appallingly rude, and eccentrically brilliant.

He's fab, isn't he - Hawksmoor showed me what historical fiction could be. Though I've rather given up on his more recent fiction. But London: A Biography is a masterpiece.

What does it matter whether people say Austen is classic/literary chicklit or not?
People here keep saying they aren't the snobs - until that one's mentioned. She is being repackaged as chicklit as is so much women's writing, presumably because they think it will sell. I don't see why the lot should be called chicklit - as I've said before - I think it is a way of trying to look down on lots of women's writing lumping it all together like that. It's like chickflicks - there are some fantastic romantic comedies and there are some dross. I saw something by accident called The Good Girl with Jennifer Anniston in it. It had a lighthearted trailer and was being sold as a comedy "chickflick". In fact it was dark and slow and downbeat. It was also pretty good. But the fact it was marketed like that did it no favours because the people who would have liked it never saw it and the people who saw it probably weren't at all in the mood for it = even if they had liked it. And it isn't a very funny film either.

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It is always the assumption that if it is written for a women, with a female lead, that men wont like it.

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BY a woman. BY a woman.

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And if the chicklit label is to do with marketability to women - I have to say all the Austen fanatics I know happen to be women. And many DO swoon at Mr Darcy etc.

It is always the assumption that if it is written for a women, with a female lead, that men wont like it.

It's probably fairly true that men won't read books like that, although they probably would enjoy them. I (perhaps unrealistically) think of myself as an eclectic reader, and yet when I look at my bookshelves, female authors are woefully under-represented. Although I seem to like writers called Dorothy - Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Sayers, Dorothea Brande...

But when my wife said "you have to read Bridget Jones it's hilarious", she was absolutely right, it's brilliant. Ditto Jane Austen by the way, I still think her line about "you have delighted us long enough" is as good a putdown as anything in Wilde or Waugh. (Sorry, that's the kind of shallow thing I judge books on sometimes.)

Perhaps we are still in a world where, like "J.K." Rowling, female writers still have to conceal their identity if they want to sell in large quantities to male readers ?

Why why why why why, Griff?

I recognise you are being honest here, by the way, which is why I am asking.

I wasn't doing JA down by calling her stuff chick-lit - far from it, I was using it to raise the bar on all books classed as Chick-lit: books written by women, for women, and about women.

Latin phrases plastered all over ... Boris Johnson)

Ooh, yes please

I don't know why I don't read books written by women aimed at women. I don't even think it's a conscious decision. Maybe it's where they are located in the shop, the kind of covers they have, I don't know. But even when I am scrounging around the 3 for 2 section looking for that third book, for some reason, I very rarely come home with a book written by a woman. It's crazy. And this from a guy who can't go 24 hours without seeing if Jane Espenson has posted something else on her blog because what she writes is so damned funny and interesting.

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And who thinks the funniest writer ever is Nancy Banks-Smith.

I don't know why I don't read books written by women aimed at women

You see this is the thing that worries me. A woman writes a humourous book and naturally might have a female MC and AS A RESULT the publishers put it in chicklit and therefore it is AIMED at women - but is the writer really aiming their book solely at women? I heard publishers prefer male characters to female leads in kids books because girls will read about boys but not the other way round. It's a bit sad and also a trap because it allows people to go "see - women can't be funny" or whatever it is they want to say.

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I am writing a comic novel with female and male characters in and would like it to be read by both (assuming that fantasy publishing deal). But this doesn't seem like a possibility when you look at how things are marketed.

If I conducted a census, I suspect that about 80% of the fiction I read purely because I fancy it is written by women. But I'm not conducting a census.

And A Gentle Axe is terrific.

Emma

Oh let me jump on that bandwagon now!

And A Gentle Axe is terrific

Yes I'm really enjoying it too. Even if it is a bit crinkly these days...

I suspect that about 80% of the fiction I read purely because I fancy it is written by women

I was meaning to ask you for a while, Emma - I was reading about Georgette Heyer and some extracts of her work online some of which seemed very well-written and funny and this thing I was reading was saying perhaps the closest comparitor might be Wodehouse. So why does she not have a similarly towering reputation? Is it because she isn't endorsed by comedians like Fry and Laurie - who are so often male? (Umm, actually I think Fry and Lawrie might always be male, but don't quote me.) Is it part of the "women can't be funny conspiracy"?

I don't know anything about Georgette Heyer except a vague memory of what looked from the covers to be historical romances, that I used to see my Mum reading. Is she, in fact, a comic novelist ?

Well I don't know as I haven't read them either - but the bit I was reading had a woman with three blokes claiming to have gained her hand whilst she was manipulating the best for herself or something - and it was very funny. I don't know if her novels are comic, but some of the extracts I read were definitely humourous ones. They seemed like tongue-in-cheek pastiches. I don't know, though, really - that's why I was interested in what Emma thought.

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"Is she, in fact, a comic novelist ?"

I suppose that's partly what I'm asking. Because how often do women get described as "comic novelist" as opposed to chicklit author or whatever?

I think "comic novelist" is a fine and lovely term. Who do you consider to be female "comic novelist"s, Griff? I would be interested to know. Is Helen Fielding a "comic novelist" or a "chicklit writer"?

Snowbell, yes, I think it is because she's a woman, and people thinks she writes Romance - all moonlight and roses. Actually, she writes sharp-eyed Romantic Comedy, quite peerlessly, and, like Wodehouse, if you enjoy her world, you settle down for good.

Like Wodehouse she has mild versions of the snobberies and prejudices of her time, but her research is immaculate, her technique remarkable, and I'd point anyone towards her who wants to learn how to wear historical research lightly, how to make a convincing couple fight their way towards a convincingly happy ending, how to handle changing PoV. But don't read Frederica or Friday's Child on the Tube - you'll get stared at for laughing. She still sells by the truckload, thirty years after her death.

The Jane Aiken Hodge bio is excellent - one of the best literary bios around for examining the interaction of a writer's work and their life and the book trade, and there's a new one out I think in the autumn, which has a lot of new material.

Emma

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Anyone who fancies giving her a go could start with The Grand Sophy

Thanks Emma. I think I might investigate. Because I knew nothing about her but some vague notion (like Griff probably) that she wrote historical sentimental stuff - which I realised when I looked her up wasn't the story at all. But I did read that she was published by Mills and Boon at one point.

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"She still sells by the truckload, thirty years after her death."

So when will she become classic - or literary (according to one of the definitions earlier). I mean - she writes well and continues to sell...