David Lassman, the director of the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, who has had difficulty finding a publisher for a novel he has written, wondered what kind of reception Austen’s novels might get from publishers these days. So, The Guardian reports, Lassman did a cheeky experiment – submitting chapters of some of Austen’s novels with minor changes to names and places to disguise them.

Lassman expected his plagiarism would be quickly spotted, but was amazed and dismayed when only one of the 18 U.K. publishers he sent submissions to called him on it. The rest, he says, merely sent “polite but firm ‘no-thank-yous.'”

Lassman began his experiment with Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, but when those novels were not identified, he sent the opening chapters of Pride and Prejudice.

And he did not change the opening line, one of the most famous in world literature: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Still the deception was not spotted and the rejection letters thudded on to Mr Lassman’s doormat, most notably one from Penguin. Its letter read: “Thank you for your recent letter and chapters from your book First Impressions. It seems like a really original and interesting read.”

…

A spokeswoman for Penguin pointed out that its letter had said only that it “seemed” original and interesting. “It would not have been read,” she insisted.

Quillblog finds Penguin’s defence interesting. How would anyone know if it even “seemed” original and interesting, if no one read it? It also sadly makes you wonder how many masterpieces might languish in a slush pile and be returned without anyone so much as looking at them.