Rejection letters as literature: The best (and worst) no's in publishing history

There’s something perversely comforting about reading other people’s rejection letters. Especially the ones addressed to now-immovable titans of literature.

Vladimir Nabokov, Sylvia Plath, and George Orwell were all rejected with varying degrees of disdain, confusion, or complete indifference. It reminds us that the taste-making machinery of publishing is imperfect, and that a firm "no" isn’t always the final answer.