Iain Sinclair

Jeff Johnson is working on the most comprehensive Iain Sinclair’s Bibliography, which is being published in installments

Fascicle IV of Jeff Johnson’s The Works of Iain Sinclair: A Descriptive Bibliography and Biographical Chronology, covering the years 1988 to 1998, is now ready to order. 

Continuing directly on from Fascicles I-III (published last year), this volume covers Sinclair’s entry into the mainstream following the success of White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings. It ends in the aftermath of his first major bestseller, Lights Out for the Territory. 

It’s a transitory, patience-trying period of false starts, beginning with an aborted attempt to launch a Spitalfields documentary, serving as a metaphor for the next decade with many meetings, proposals, pitches, forays, and experiments leading into cul-de-sacs.

The few major publications, usually novels, that take physical form have a long gestation period, full of difficulties. An editorial role, a possible way to bring Revival poetry to a larger audience, proves to be as frustrating as the authorial one. Journalism (TV, radio, and print) proves to be the quickest way to get the work ‘out there’ and, unexpectedly, paves the way to mainstream success and the end of bookdealing as the scholarly autopsies begin.

This fascicle, pleasingly, ends with the broadcast of a twice-thwarted Spitalfields documentary and the presaging of several publications in the coming year.