Rejected classics are easy to find in lists and hard to find in archives. The best-documented rejections leave paper behind: T. S. Eliot's letter of 13 July 1944 turning down Animal Farm for Faber, a reader's note calling Lord of the Flies "Rubbish & dull", and a 1797 offer of the novel that became Pride and Prejudice, marked "declined by return of post". Our view, stated plainly: a rejection story is worth repeating only when a letter, a reader's report or a publisher's record stands behind it.
EdCitation publishes this guide. On 3 October 2026 we read each letter and record named here, at the archive, the publisher, the authors' own sites or an auction catalogue, and say where a famous number could not be traced.
EdCitation never writes any part of anyone's work, and we are proud of that: every sentence a student hands in stays theirs. Find sources searches the scholarship, Cite a source builds the reference, and Mechanics QA gives a finished essay on any of these books the rule-by-rule first read a marker gives it.
Which famous books were rejected by publishers?
Each rejection below rests on a document: a letter, a reader's report, or the publisher's or author's own account.
| Book | Rejected by, and when | On the record | Published | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Impressions (Pride and Prejudice) | Thomas Cadell, 1797 | "declined by return of post" | 1813 | St John's College Library (2014) |
| The Tale of Peter Rabbit | Six or more publishers, by 1901 | They wanted it larger, in colour | Privately, 1901; Warne, 1902 | Victoria and Albert Museum (2024) |
| Du côté de chez Swann | The Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF) | Gide later called it the NRF's gravest mistake | Grasset, at Proust's expense, 1913 | Sotheby's (2013) |
| Down and Out in Paris and London | Faber, 1932 | "decidedly too short" | Gollancz, 1933 | Faber (2019) |
| Animal Farm | Four publishers, Faber among them, 1944 | Not "the right point of view" | Secker and Warburg, 1945 | Orwell (1972); Faber (2019) |
| The Diary of Anne Frank (US) | Alfred A. Knopf, 1950 | "very dull reading" | Doubleday took the rights within a year | Colleary (2015) |
| Lord of the Flies | Several publishers, then Faber's reader, 1953 | "Rubbish & dull. Pointless. Reject." | Faber, 1954 | Presley (2019) |
| A Bear Called Paddington | Faber, 1957 | "the best of the book lies in its title" | Another publisher | Faber (2019) |
| Lolita (US) | American publishers, 1955 to 1958 | Fear of "fines or jail" | Paris, 1955; New York, 1958 | Cornell University Library (n.d.) |
| The Left Hand of Darkness | An unnamed editor, 1968 | "unreadable" | Ace, 1969 | Le Guin (n.d.) |
| A Confederacy of Dunces | "countless publishers" | Toole died in 1969, unpublished | LSU Press, 1980 | Grove Atlantic (n.d.) |
| Your essay on one of them | Your marker | Formatting, citations, spell-checker slips | Checked first in Mechanics QA | EdCitation |
What did T. S. Eliot reject at Faber and Faber?
Eliot, poet and Faber director, turned down two Orwell books and a British Ulysses. Toby Faber, a former managing director, prints the letters in his 2019 history of the firm (Faber, 2019).
Orwell and Joyce in 1932
On 19 February 1932 Eliot told Eric Blair that Down and Out in Paris and London was "decidedly too short" and loosely built; Gollancz published it in 1933. On 20 April he warned Joyce that a British Ulysses risked prosecution, with Faber's chairman facing "six months in gaol". The Bodley Head published it instead.
Animal Farm in 1944
Eliot's letter of 13 July 1944 called the fable "a distinguished piece of writing" and still said no: Faber's directors doubted it took "the right point of view" on the politics of the moment (Faber, 2019). UCL holds it in the Orwell archive as ORWELL/H/1/63/2 (Orwell Foundation, 2020).
Orwell's own account, a preface found in 1972 and printed that September in the Times Literary Supplement, says the book "was refused by four publishers". One accepted it, consulted the Ministry of Information and withdrew, fearing that "the choice of pigs as the ruling caste" would offend (Orwell, 1972). Orwell names no firm; later accounts name Jonathan Cape, which we did not find in a document we read. Secker and Warburg published Animal Farm on 17 August 1945. His 1946 essay on prose is in Orwell's rules for writers.
What did publishers' readers say about books that lasted?
A reader's report is a short verdict for an editor; four survive for books now in every library.
Lord of the Flies (1953)
William Golding sent Faber a typescript called Strangers From Within on 14 September 1953. The reader wrote across his cover letter, from "Absurd & uninteresting fantasy" to "Rubbish & dull. Pointless. Reject." (Faber, 2019). Other publishers had already refused it; Charles Monteith, a new editor, took it from the reject pile and persuaded the firm to publish (Presley, 2019). It became Lord of the Flies, published in 1954 "after several rejections" (Nobel Prize Outreach, n.d.).
A Bear Called Paddington (1957)
Faber's report of 28 August 1957 complained that the jokes were all on the bear and the Browns were "perfect fools". Toby Faber, as a reader, is glad another publisher took it (Faber, 2019).
The Diary of Anne Frank (1950)
Otto Frank published the diary in Dutch in 1947, then struggled to find an American publisher. At Alfred A. Knopf in July 1950, the reader called it "a dreary record" of family bickering that "would not add prestige to a publisher's list" (Colleary, 2015). Within a year Doubleday had the rights, and Commentary printed the first American extracts in May and June 1952.
The Left Hand of Darkness (1968)
Ursula K. Le Guin posted a letter of 21 June 1968 to her agent "to cheer up anybody who just got a rejection letter", leaving out the editor's name and firm (Le Guin, n.d.). The editor granted that she "writes extremely well", but found the book "so endlessly complicated by details of reference and information" that it became "unreadable". Ace published it in 1969, and it won the 1970 Hugo Award for best novel (Hugo Awards, n.d.).
How did rejected books get published in the end?
By one of four routes: the author waited, the author paid, someone insisted, or the book went abroad.
Waiting and paying: Austen, Potter and Proust
George Austen offered his daughter's First Impressions to Thomas Cadell on 1 November 1797; a note on the letter, MS 279 at St John's College, Oxford, records it "declined by return of post". Jane Austen reached print fourteen years later with Sense and Sensibility (St John's College Library, 2014).
Beatrix Potter's publishers wanted a bigger book; she held that "little rabbits cannot afford to spend 6 shillings" on one. On 16 December 1901 she had 250 copies printed, and that day Warne, urged by a family friend, offered terms. Its edition of October 1902 began at 8,000 copies; the V&A puts sales at 40 million (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2024).
Marcel Proust paid Grasset to publish Du côté de chez Swann on 14 November 1913, after the NRF had refused it. In January 1914 André Gide wrote that the refusal "restera la plus grave erreur de la N.R.F." (will remain the NRF's gravest mistake), taking much of the blame (Sotheby's, 2013).
Someone insisted, or the book went abroad
John Kennedy Toole died in 1969, frustrated at failing to interest a publisher. His mother made the writer Walker Percy read the novel; Louisiana State University Press published it in April 1980, and it won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (Grove Atlantic, n.d.).
Nabokov's Lolita appeared in Paris in September 1955 from the Olympia Press. No American publisher would risk it until Putnam's edition of 1958, which reached number one on the best-seller list a week after Cincinnati's public library banned it (Cornell University Library, n.d.).
Which famous rejection stories cannot be traced?
The most repeated stories are often the weakest. Each below is unconfirmed.
| Story | What the record shows | Verdict | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Harry Potter was rejected by twelve publishers | Her site: chapters to agents, one asked for the rest, Bloomsbury in June 1997; her 2016 posts on rejection give no number | No count in her accounts we read | Rowling (n.d.); Beck (2016) |
| Dr. Seuss's first book was rejected 27 times | The figure came from Guy McLain of the Springfield Museum, on NPR in 2012 | Not confirmed in Geisel's own words | NPR Staff (2012) |
| Carrie was rejected 30 times | King's 50th-anniversary account: his wife, Tabby, "picked it out of the wastebasket"; Doubleday offered $2,500 | No document for the count | Shanahan (2024) |
| Gone with the Wind was rejected 38 times | Macmillan's Harold Latham asked for it in April 1935; a contract followed by July | No rejection recorded | Thomas (2021) |
| A publisher asked Melville "does it have to be a whale?" | Richard Bentley published The Whale in London, October 1851, in 500 copies | Contradicted by the record | Newberry Library (n.d.) |
| Knopf's reader put Anne Frank's diary at the "curiosity" level | Not in the report the Ransom Center quotes | Unconfirmed | Colleary (2015) |
| An editor told Kipling he could not use English | No letter, archive or account found | Unconfirmed | None found |
How do you check a famous rejection story before you repeat it?
Find the document, then test its details against a second record, as we did here.
- Look for the letter or report itself. An archive catalogue gives a shelfmark, such as MS 279 at St John's College.
- Prefer the publisher's or author's own account. Faber's history and Le Guin's site print the letters; most lists of famous rejections name no source.
- Treat every count as a claim. Twelve, 27, 30 and 38 are remembered numbers, and none came with a letter.
- Check dates against a second record. Toby Faber's excerpt dates Lord of the Flies to 1953, the year Golding sent it; the Nobel Prize's record gives 1954.
- Read the scholarship. Find sources searches about 300 million published works, by topic or by the claim a sentence needs.
- Cite what you read. Cite a source builds a reference from a DOI, a title, an ISBN or a web address in six styles, and a web page's details can be corrected first.
- Check the list. Verify references, free, marks each entry verified, "check this" or not found, and never shows "could not check" as not found.
The same habit tests any source: see how to check a reference is real, and famous plagiarism cases for what follows when the record is ignored.
How does EdCitation check an essay about these books?
The readers in these stories decided fast, and often on form: Faber's reader judged Golding from a cover letter and a first chapter. A marker also forms a view early, from a margin, a heading or a citation that matches nothing. EdCitation's checks are that first read, done by rule; the judgement stays with the writer and the marker, and no EdCitation tool writes, trims or rephrases a word.
Mechanics QA, for formatting and slips
In our view Mechanics QA is the best tool for the last read before a deadline: it makes the fast first judgement Faber's reader made, but by rule, with the fix beside each finding and no model reading your paper. Upload a Word document or a PDF. It checks font, size, spacing, margins, title page, headings and the reference list against the APA 7 student paper; finds comments, tracked changes, placeholders and template text left in the file; matches each citation to the list and looks each reference up in the publisher's record; flags figures that do not add up or disagree between sections; and catches the slips a spell-checker lets through. Each finding is marked where it sits and names the rule it broke. It is part of Pro, at $8 a month, and a free account can run three checks a month (Pricing).
Find sources and the Library
On 3 October 2026 we ran Find sources, free, once for "publishers rejecting manuscripts literary history". It returned 20,466 results. The first was "Glossary of Literary Terms - A"; the second was Yuliya Komska's 2017 article in Seminar, "Trade Publisher Archives: Repositories of Monolingualism? Race, Language, and Rejected Refugee Manuscripts in the Age of Total War" (doi:10.3138/seminar.53.3.06). For criticism of these novels, the Library catalogue searches scholarly books by discipline, kind, language and year; Max, at $24 a month, adds reading or borrowing from more than 5 million books, a collection EdCitation compiled. To cite the novel itself, see how to cite a book or ebook.
Quick questions
Who rejected Animal Farm?
Four publishers, by Orwell's own count, among them Faber and Faber, where T. S. Eliot declined it on 13 July 1944. Secker and Warburg published it on 17 August 1945.
Was Harry Potter really rejected by twelve publishers?
The number is widely repeated, but J. K. Rowling's own site gives no count, and we found none in a document we could read. Bloomsbury published the first book in June 1997.
Was Lord of the Flies rejected?
Yes. Several publishers refused it, and Faber's reader called it "Rubbish & dull" in 1953 before Charles Monteith persuaded the firm to publish it in 1954.
Is the Moby-Dick "does it have to be a whale" letter real?
We found no record of it, and the record contradicts it: Richard Bentley published the book in London in October 1851.
Can EdCitation check my essay on a rejected classic before I hand it in?
Yes, without writing a word of it. Mechanics QA, in Pro, checks formatting, citations, numbers and the slips a spell-checker misses; Verify references, free, checks the list.
References
- Beck, C. (2016, March 25). J.K. Rowling offers rejection letters as lesson in perseverance. The Christian Science Monitor. https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2016/0325/J.K.-Rowling-offers-rejection-letters-as-lesson-in-perseverence
- Colleary, E. (2015, October 6). Anne Frank and the archive. Ransom Center Magazine. https://sites.utexas.edu/ransomcentermagazine/2015/10/06/anne-frank-and-the-archive/
- Cornell University Library. (n.d.). Publishing Lolita. Nabokov at Cornell. https://exhibits.library.cornell.edu/lolita/feature/publishing-lolita
- Faber, T. (2019, September 12). A legendary publishing house's most infamous rejection letters. Literary Hub. https://lithub.com/a-legendary-publishing-houses-most-infamous-rejection-letters/
- Grove Atlantic. (n.d.). A confederacy of dunces. https://groveatlantic.com/book/a-confederacy-of-dunces/
- Hugo Awards. (n.d.). 1970 Hugo Awards. The Hugo Award. https://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/1970-hugo-awards/
- Le Guin, U. K. (n.d.). A rejection letter. Ursula K. Le Guin. https://www.ursulakleguin.com/a-rejection-letter
- Newberry Library. (n.d.). Melville: Finding America at sea: Checklist of items in exhibition. https://www.newberry.org/uploads/files/MelvilleExhibitionChecklist.pdf
- Nobel Prize Outreach. (n.d.). William Golding: Facts. NobelPrize.org. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1983/golding/facts/
- NPR Staff. (2012, January 24). How Dr. Seuss got his start "on Mulberry Street". NPR. https://www.npr.org/2012/01/24/145471724/how-dr-seuss-got-his-start-on-mulberry-street
- Orwell, G. (1972). The freedom of the press [Proposed preface to Animal Farm]. The Orwell Foundation. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/
- Orwell Foundation. (2020, August 17). "George Orwell and the Battle for Animal Farm": New film marks 75th anniversary of novel's publication. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/news-events/news-events/news/george-orwell-and-the-battle-for-animal-farm-new-film-marks-75th-anniversary-of-novels-publication/
- Presley, N. (2019, March 29). Faber and Faber's 90th anniversary. William Golding. https://william-golding.co.uk/faber-and-fabers-90th-anniversary
- Rowling, J. K. (n.d.). About. J.K. Rowling. https://www.jkrowling.com/about/
- Shanahan, M. (2024, April 4). On the 50th anniversary of "Carrie", Stephen King talks about how his first horror novel came to be. The Boston Globe. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/04/04/arts/stephen-kings-first-horror-novel-carrie-50th-anniversary/
- Sotheby's. (2013). [Proust, Marcel] -- Gide, André [Auction lot 159, Livres et manuscrits]. https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2013/livres-manuscrits-pf1313/lot.159.html
- St John's College Library. (2014, June 25). Jane and George Austen, letters (MS 279). St John's College, Oxford. https://stjohnscollegelibraryoxford.org/2014/06/25/jane-and-george-austen-letters-ms-279/
- Thomas, J. (2021). Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949). New Georgia Encyclopedia. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/margaret-mitchell-1900-1949/
- Victoria and Albert Museum. (2024). Peter Rabbit: The tale of "The Tale". https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/peter-rabbit-the-tale-of-the-tale