[B1FF_PSUVM]

"One reason for her critical neglect is that she didn’t fit in—a reflection of the institutional prejudices of the English literary world. She was a woman writing when writing was a man’s game—not just a man’s game, but a public school/university-educated man’s game."

Blithely written about the days when Agatha Christie topped best-seller lists.

[kombookcha]

Agatha Christie is not remembered for being a literary darling, but for being a huge commercial and pop-cultural success. She wrote mystery thrillers, and towered over the genre for decades - and still does in many ways. But the quoted bit is specifically about literary insiders, and the boxes that a given writer may or may not fit into. Which may include gender norms.

From reading the article, Sully being neglected by critics may well have been caused in part by her writings falling outside the expectations of both the literary and broad readerships, and neither really knowing what to make of her. Ironically causing her legacy to end up marooned because of the very traits that make the texts interesting.

[pmyteh]

I think the writer means literary in the narrower sense of 'literary fiction'. Christie was a genre writer; like F/SF etc. I understand that wasn't quite respectable in the upper echelons of the book world. Certainly the reviewers in places like the TLS would be primarily interested in literary fiction.

[tgv]

The article may seem to take that view, but dispels it at the same time: "a list of 100 or so English woman novelists of the 20th century, a list running from Margaret Atwood to Virginia Woolf." Then it comes up with other possible explanations, all speculative. There's no conclusion.

[OfSanguineFire]

Virgina Woolf wasn’t so highly regarded until mid century, well after her death. Before that, her reputation did not extend outside a circle of modernists. The Bloomsbury scene in general were countercultural even within the English literary-fiction world.