25 Masterpieces Initially Rejected as Failures
An article from Quartz showcases 25 renowned pieces of art, literature, and music that faced initial rejection or censorship. Among these are Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring' (1913 Paris riot), Melville's 'Moby-Dick' (1851 failure), Nabokov's 'Lolita' (banned in the UK), the Impressionists (turned down by the Paris Salon), Joyce's 'Ulysses' (obscenity trial), and Manet's 'Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe' (1863 scandal). Additionally, Rowling's 'Harry Potter' was rejected by 12 publishers, Orwell's 'Animal Farm' encountered political pushback, and Welles's 'Citizen Kane' was a commercial disappointment. The article suggests that these early dismissals often stemmed from challenging prevailing norms, with later acceptance achieved through evolving critical perspectives, legal disputes, or unintentional circulation.
Key facts
- Stravinsky's Rite of Spring caused a riot at its 1913 premiere in Paris.
- Moby-Dick sold about 3,200 copies in its first year and went out of print.
- Lolita was rejected by four US publishers before Olympia Press published it in 1955.
- The Impressionists were systematically rejected by the Paris Salon in the 1860s-1870s.
- Ulysses was prosecuted for obscenity in the US in 1920; ban lifted in 1933.
- Lady Chatterley's Lover was banned in the UK until the 1960 trial Regina v. Penguin Books.
- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was rejected by 12 publishers before Bloomsbury.
- Van Gogh sold only one painting during his lifetime, The Red Vineyard, in 1890.
Entities
Artists
- Igor Stravinsky
- Vaslav Nijinsky
- Pierre Monteux
- Herman Melville
- Carl Van Doren
- D.H. Lawrence
- Vladimir Nabokov
- Graham Greene
- Claude Monet
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir
- Edgar Degas
- Camille Pissarro
- Alfred Sisley
- Berthe Morisot
- James Joyce
- Margaret Anderson
- Jane Heap
- John Woolsey
- Édouard Manet
- Gustave Flaubert
- Pinard
- Ludwig van Beethoven
- Leonard Bernstein
- J.K. Rowling
- Barry Cunningham
- Johannes Vermeer
- Théophile Thoré-Bürger
- Mary Shelley
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Vincent van Gogh
- Theo van Gogh
- Jo van Gogh-Bonger
- George Orwell
- Victor Gollancz
- Jonathan Cape
- T.S. Eliot
- Orson Welles
- William Randolph Hearst
- François Truffaut
- André Bazin
- Ralph Ellison
- Richard Wright
- Madeleine L'Engle
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
- H.L. Mencken
- Hermann Hesse
- Thomas Pynchon
- Irwin Corey
- Allen Ginsberg
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- Ridley Scott
Institutions
- Théâtre des Champs-Élysées
- Olympia Press
- Simon & Schuster
- New Directions
- Farrar Straus
- Viking Press
- British Home Office
- Putnam
- Time magazine
- The Times
- Paris Salon
- Salon des Refusés
- The Little Review
- United States Post Office
- Penguin Books
- Bloomsbury
- Chicken House
- Rijksmuseum
- Frick Collection
- National Gallery of Art
- Mauritshuis
- Quarterly Review
- Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung
- Secker & Warburg
- Faber and Faber
- RKO Pictures
- Cahiers du Cinéma
- Sight & Sound
- National Book Award
- Pulitzer Prize
- City Lights Books
- San Francisco Police
- Beat Generation
- Council on Books in Wartime
Locations
- Paris
- France
- London
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Florence
- Italy
- Delft
- Netherlands
- Berlin
- Germany
- San Francisco
- California
- New York
Sources
- Quartz —