Picture of Nobody - Philip Owens

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Picture of Nobody

by
Philip Owens

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

Title:	Picture of Nobody
Author:	Philip Owens
Genre:	Novel
Written:	1936
Length:	293 pages
Availability:	Picture of Nobody - US
	Picture of Nobody - UK
	Picture of Nobody - Canada

	from: Bookshop.org (US)

With a Foreword by Allen Bratton
The original edition had a Preface by L.A.G.Strong

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Our Assessment:

B+ : a clever (and fun) idea, adroitly handled

See our review for fuller assessment.

Review Summaries
Source	Rating	Date	Reviewer
The Spectator	.	7/2/1936	Seán O'Faoláin
Sunday Times	.	19/1/1936	Ralph Straus
The Times	.	17/1/1936	.

From the Reviews:

"It is a literary man's book in that it hits upon the happy idea of depicting Will Shakespeare as he would have been in modern times, and there is a certain amusement in Mr. Owen's imaginings of all that harum-scarum company of Kyds and Marlowes and Oldcastles hanging around pubs, betting on horses, sponging on publishers, reading superior Spectator reviews and what not besides. (...) (T)he book may be taken as a frolic well worth its hour." - Seán O'Faoláin, The Spectator

"It is a bitter satire, with more than a touch of fantasy about it. Also it has its faults. (...) Nevertheless, this is one of the few first novels of recent years which I am eager to read again, and one of the very few which I could wish had been longer. (...) (H)is book may bewilder you a little now and then, and you may think that he has missed opportunities, but at least it is a brave and stimulating business, the kind of queer story which persistently remains in your mind. (...) It is a provocative and whimsical story which deserves serious attention." - Ralph Straus, Sunday Times

"(T)he fact that Mr. Owens's premise is not necessarily true does not at all mean that the book is an uninteresting one. On the contrary, it is quite unusually vivid both in irony and in genuine feeling; it has a good deal of humour and is arresting because of its sincerity. One may be in two minds about the poet doomed to a losing battle in our age; but one can have no doubts about what the author means to say, nor that he says it well and with originality." - The Times

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

Picture of Nobody has a fun premise, transposing the figure of William Shakespeare to (then-)contemporary (i.e. 1930s) London and showing how the talented writer might fare. The protagonist is 'Will Shakespere' and he is a struggling poet when the novel opens. Perhaps, however, his career can get properly started now: his Venus and Adonis just needs some polishing, and wife Anne had run into his old schoolmate Richard Field, who has set up as a publisher -- of the Adonis Press -- and is eager to take Will and his work on .....
Owens plays loose with literary history not just with Shakespeare: in this world it was Shawe (as in George Bernard) -- "the mysterious provincial" -- who was the foremost of the writers of a golden age centuries earlier, Will looking back admiringly at: "his predecessors, that race of gigantic poets, the Shavians". (There's also debate whether Shawe actually wrote the works ascribed to him; among the theories bandied about is that one 'Sidney Lord Passfield' (i.e. Sidney Webb) or: "Birkenhead collaborated with Shawe, some of the plays, certainly on anything to do with trade unions and socialism. Obviously, it's clear Shawe could have known little or nothing about either".) Meanwhile, in the present-day, Shakespere meets other writers such as Marlowe and Kyd ...... And Owens doesn't just have writers of this and that day change places, with literary-historical play that also extends to and includes wordplay, making for multiple levels of entertaining meaning:

'Mr. Caslon been in yet ?' The landlord told Mr. Field, no. One of the barmaids added that he had not yet turned up. The other said Mr. Garamond had just left but Mr. Bodoni was coming in again. There seemed a lot of people anxious to talk with the Adonis Press.
'Cheerio,' said everyone.
Over friendly shoulders, beneath accommodating arms, the steaming grogs made their way. Ah, here was Bodoni. 'Who's Tony with ? Pearl ? Thought he was pretty well set with Ruby. She's a type.'

       Not least, there's also Miss Sonnett, Field's assistant, "a girl of infinite adapatability" (as sonnets are ...) who Shakespere is drawn to and with whom he has an affair.
       The Shakesperes' landlord is Mr.Oldcastle, who also spies an opportunity when he meets Field: publishing, he thinks, is a: "Great game, great game !" and while he's long dabbled in betting on the horses he's certain about publishing, that: "As a gamble it beats racing".
       So Oldcastle gets himself taken on by Adonis Press, as traveling sales agent -- after all:

I've had a deal of experience in selling things, it's the age of commerce, alas. Books are a difficult proposition, naturally; but it's a pity to see a press going downhill for lack of a good traveller.

       The press is having difficulties, and Venus and Adonis is not the break-out hit it and Shakespere could have used; a cutting review by "Robert Green the famous novelist" (read: Robert Greene, (in)famous for his criticism of Shakespeare in his Greenes, groats-worth of witte (e.g.)) doesn't help, and Shakespere's book barely sells. But Oldcastle seems to have been doing some good work -- "Does more for me in a week than all the booksellers and reviewers in England", Field says ecstatically (before learning what Oldcastle has really been up to ...) -- and gets Lizzie Tidder interested in Shakespere. She has a thing for poets -- as Field explains: "I suppose it's like collecting Ming porcelain ... only a few can afford to. Besides, poets are less independent, and she's an imperious old dame I've heard" -- and for Shakespere to be her protégé -- "someone equivalent almost, in her way, to the Queen of England" ... -- is a golden and remunerative opportunity: "Poets ! she makes or mars 'em".
       Alas, that too only works out for so long, and as Shakespere completes his Lucrece everything is going south. Miss Sonnett abandons the Adonis Press (and Shakespere), the press goes bust, and Anne gets pregnant. The Shakesperes have a tough time of it -- unlike former landlord Captain Oldcastle, who reïnvents himself -- as 'John Falstaff' of course: "Got to have an easily remembered name in the advertising business", which is what he's now taken up, with great success.
       Falstaff remains favorably inclined to Shakespere and his poetry and becomes his patron of sorts, including setting him up with a position at the ... Danish Commercial Guide (whose editor is a Doctor Polonius). It's ... vaguely appropriate, as the project Shakespere is now working on is an: "old Danish story".
       Shakespere manages to finish the long poem -- "It would be foolish to term it a play, when it could never be acted; and was more like a scenario than anything else" --, though he struggles with a title ("he was never good at titles"). And:

Friends read parts of it and found the work amazingly subjective, psychological and symbolic. It was Marxian on the left hand, and Freudian on the right, with the poet in between, upstage.

Behind the scenes he's Falstaff's ghost- and speech-writer -- and does a fine and much-appreciate job at that -- but of course he wants to see the triumph of his own work -- Amleth, or perhaps better-titled: Hamlet. But what do the publishers think? Soon enough he's quite resigned:

'No,' Shakespere told Anne, 'there doesn't seem much hope. It looks as if I'll have to write a novel.'

       Rosencrantz -- "chief reader for two of the big publishers" -- and literary agent Guildenstern take on Shakespere and have some ideas as to what he should do with this particular work and how he can enjoy success as an author, and soon he seems on his way -- even if then: "No longer a poet, he was not certain what he was".
       Picture of Nobody also comes with something of a surprise -- or at least certainly very dramatic -- ending (plus a 'Footnote'-postscript addressing -- if not fully explaining -- that very wild last turn). Odd though this is, it does allow for an appropriate-enough curtain to Shakespere and his ambitions.
       As clever as the conceit of the novel is, it's also the style that is particularly striking -- Owens unable or unwilling to keep the poet in himself down and out, with many brief flourishes and the occasional extended one:

It was no wonder he felt something of the sun's liberty, wind's arrogance, the light-heartedness of the morning. Humanity's million-headed sea was everywhere in surf and each ninth wave had its larger swelling of personality. A thousand faces sent the memory into vanished costume. Roundhead and centurion gripped their umbrellas, the Pict alighted from a taxi. In exiled melancholy the nomad waited while the traffic flowed by, buccaneers consulted the policeman's arm and then, elbow to elbow, moved when the traffic froze. A clansman knocked the ashes out of his pipe. Corinthians felt for a newspaper penny. The skeletons in passing eyed one another, interested.

At times it can feel Owens doesn't do enough with his premise, but often the subtlety of some of what he does do with it is what is particularly pleasing. Though he goes through some very hard times, Shakespere does, in fact, have too much good fortune for this to truly be the story of an artist unrecognized and crushed by his all-too commercial times (though when were they not ?). But Owens is good in the particular ways Shakespere's talents are thwarted -- and put to other use (and it is amusing to see how the poet aspires to poetry, and takes it as complete failure to even have to consider writing something as base as a ... novel). And Falstaff and Field are both particularly well drawn, and their successes and failures and how they take to changed circumstances are as interesting as Shakespere's own path.
It all makes for a somewhat odd work -- though it's probably for the best and makes for a better story that Owens mostly doesn't go for all the easy and obvious targets in a novel with this premise. If it feels slightly misshapen -- so also, arguably, with the concluding turn where things go rather spectacularly off the rails (though, ironically, for a work published in 1936 it's a turn that also shows an eerie kind of prescience) --, Picture of Nobody is still an impressive and often very funny piece of work.

- M.A.Orthofer, 1 February 2026

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Links:

Picture of Nobody:

McNally Editions publicity page

Reviews:

Wormwoodiana

Other books of interest under review:

See Index of Books Written Between 1900 and 1945

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About the Author:

English author Philip Owens lived 1901 to 1945.

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