The story is a farce about greed in the publishing world, and the struggle between literature as a high art and the commercial imperative to reduce it to its lowest common denominator.

He never reads the books he publishes, and considers authors to be useless members of society, good only for helping him make money.

The book's title refers to a textbook by Dr Sydney Louth, under whom Frensic read English Literature at Oxford.

This is a thinly disguised reference to real life critic F. R. Leavis, author of The Great Tradition and The Common Pursuit.

[1] BBC Radio 4 broadcast a 4-part adaptation of The Great Pursuit in 2005, with Sandra Dickinson as Baby Hutchmeyer, Mark Heap as Frensic, Laurel Lefkow as Sonia Futtle and Adam Godley as Peter Piper.