In the realm of publishing, novelist Sue Townsend dominated England in the 1980s. Creator of Adrian Mole, a character described by Spectator reviewer Claudia FitzHerbert in 1992 as "a twerpish teenage boy from Leicester with a heart of gold and an unparalleled gift for bathos," Townsend was the best-selling English author of the decade.

An established playwright in her native Leicester, Townsend emerged from local writer to national (and later worldwide) publishing phenomenon in the 1980s. Her new role as a national best-selling author began with her publication of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 in 1982, which was followed by The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole in 1984, The True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole, Margaret Hilda Roberts, and Susan Lilian Townsend in 1989, Adrian Mole: From Minor to Major in 1991, Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years in 1993, and Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years in 1999. Each of these, which taken together...