W&N acquires ‘wonderful’ essay collection by the late Elspeth Barker

W&N has acquired Notes from the Henhouse, a "wonderful" essay collection by the late Elspeth Barker, who died in April 2022.

Lettice Franklin, publishing director, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Victoria Hobbs at A M Heath. Kara Watson, executive editor at Scribner, acquired North American rights. The collection will be published in hardback, audiobook and e-book in November 2023.

Elspeth Barker was a Scottish novelist and journalist. Her only novel, O Caledonia, was originally published in 1991. In 2021, W&N republished O Caledonia onto the W&N Essentials list and it was subsequently made Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month.

The publisher says: “In 2023, W&N are very happy to be publishing another book from Elspeth Barker, a completely delightful collection of autobiographical essays. In Notes from the Henhouse, you will find [for example], a Gothic castle, a draughty Norfolk farmhouse and a malevolent Aga; a pet pig, Portia, with a penchant for drama, an obsession with geraniums and an addiction to wine (the Bulgarian vintage); and George Barker, poet and beloved husband, warbling cowboy songs into his glass and declaiming Hopkins and Housman in The Drinking Room."

Franklin said: “Reissuing O Caledonia two years ago was one of the happiest experiences of my working life. At the end of Maggie O’Farrell’s introduction to that new edition, she wrote: ‘I confess that I harbour a secret hope that there might be a secret pile of pages in a certain idiosyncratic handwriting somewhere in a desk-drawer in Norfolk…’ I am happy to say that we have found those pages, with the help of Elspeth’s family and Peter Tolhurst, her publisher at Black Dog Books and we are thrilled to be publishing Notes from the Henhouse, a selection of Elspeth’s wonderful essays.

“These essays invite us into a world of ramshackle country homes where Shetland ponies eat geraniums in the kitchen, chaotic families collide, gardens run riot, grief lurks, and, of course, brilliant sentences multiply and divide. Together they create an unforgettable, irresistible portrait of a riotous, rapturous, remarkable life.”

Raffaella Barker, Elspeth Barker’s daughter, said: “Putting together Notes from the Henhouse was like opening a door into the past. Suddenly I was having all the funny, poignant and luminous chats about life and its sparks and trip wires with Mum again.

"Reading this volume in future will mean I never have to say goodbye to her inimitable wit and wisdom.  No one will ever transform the everyday into magic quite like she did.”