EPITAPH FOR A PROLIFIC NOVELIST

"The Warwick Deeping Appreciation
Society is currently defunct."   
         —Internet notice on a fan website

Alas, alas for Warwick Deeping!
His audience is mostly sleeping
(and he himself since 1950).
Some critics didn’t think it nifty
his books kept tumbling off the press:
but always wanting more, not less,
he published two or three a year
to earn a living free and clear,
and gained a fanbase Middlebrow
(not many left to praise him now)
who liked his work and liked it well
and swore that he could cast a spell
to keep them coming back for more.
This lasted till the Second War;
and after that, ‘twas all downhill—
a melancholy slide, but still
he had a forty-year career
(and twenty years of fame beside)
with sixty-seven novels here,
and six more
                      after he died.

Copyright © Robert D. Sutherland, 2009