Ten top overlooked novels

John Sutherland is Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. He has written many books and articles on a variety of subjects - but mostly concentrating on Victorian fiction, the history of publishing, and twentieth-century fiction.

For the Guardian he named a top ten list of overlooked novels, including:

Cockfighter, Charles Willeford, 1962

Willeford achieved late-life fame with his Hoke Mosley crime novels – now regarded as classics of Miami noir. He himself regarded Cockfighter as his legacy book. Cockfighting (of which Willeford wholly approved) is presented as something archetypally manly (only male birds fight) and quintessentially American. "As every cocker knows," the novel tells us, "honest Abe Lincoln was once a cockpit referee." George Washington was a fan. The cockpit incarnates the American frontier spirit as symbolically as did the corrida for Hemingway. Cockfighting is illegal in the US, although it is still a very popular, particularly in the south. One closes the novel, almost wanting to see one of the horrible things.

Keynote line: "'What matters is not the idea a man holds but the depth at which he holds it.' Ezra Pound." (Cockfighter's epigraph).

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue