White Rabbit signs Allan’s ‘profound’ human history of clay

White Rabbit has acquired Clay: A Human History by journalist, broadcaster and author of The Foghorn’s Lament (White Rabbit) Jennifer Lucy Allan.

Lee Brackstone, publisher, acquired world rights to Allan’s second book from Natalie Galustian at Greyhound Literary. It will be published on 14th March 2024. 

The publisher synopsis reads: “People have been taking handfuls of earth and forming them into their own image since humanity began. Human forms are found everywhere there was a ceramic tradition, and there is a ceramic tradition everywhere there was human activity. 

“Humans first recorded our own history on clay tablets, the shape of the characters influenced by the clay itself. The first love poem was inscribed in a clay tablet, from a Sumerian bride to her king more than 4,000 years ago, and this book is a love letter to clay, to the material that is at the beginning, middle and end of all of our lives; that contains within it the eternal, the elemental, the profound and the everyday. 

“Born out of a desire to know and understand this material in both its micro- and macro- histories, Clay: A Human History combines the author’s own experience with clay with archaeology and history, to tell the story about our relationship with this most profound everyday material.” 

Allan said she fell instantly in love with clay in a shipping container studio in Essex some years ago as the “profound and everyday material was a complete revelation”.  It represents the most elemental transformations, she said, but is all around us every day. 

She said: “This book is my paean to clay, illuminating its symbiotic relationship with human lives, art, and civilization from a decidedly contemporary position. It is the book I so wanted and needed to read all those years ago when I began my love affair with clay; that captures the influence and idiosyncrasies of this most incredible material.” 

Brackstone said: “Allan has already shown herself to be a huge talent with an instinct for magical thinking about the world with her acclaimed debut, The Foghorn’s Lament. Like the very best writers in the field of creative nonfiction she transforms everything she writes about with a humanising touch that is both of, and outside, this world. 

“In her hands this subject is going to take on new and heretofore unseen dimensions; at once grounded in the earth where we find the clay that defines us and moulds us, and more than that, out there in the furthest reaches of the cosmos, where new discoveries are made.” 

Allan has been a journalist for over a decade, writing on underground and experimental music for publications including the Guardian, the Quietus, and the Wire. She is a presenter on BBC Radio 3’s "Late Junction", and wrote and presented "Life, Death and the Foghorn" for BBC Radio 4. She also runs the archival record label Arc Light Editions.