Melville House Books

It seemed, at first, that one of the world’s richest women had won in her fight against an aristocratic author: lawyers for Lily Safra, reportedly worth over a $1 billion, convinced Arcadia Books to withdraw the already published Empress Bianca by Lady Colin Campbell from bookstores and to even destroy the unsold copies. As Anthony Barnes and Nicholas Pyke report in a story for The Independent, Safra “claimed the main character in Lady Colin’s debut novel, Empress Bianca, was a defamatory, thinly disguised version of her life.” But in response, they report, “Lady Colin has gone on the offensive, branding her antagonist a ‘vulgar’ publicity seeker,” and “threatening to counter-sue” if Safra doesn’t relent and allow the book back into bookstores. Meanwhile, says Arcadia’s Gary Pulsifer, “We’re a small, independent publisher and we’re too small to fight something like this.” So is the protagonist of the book modeled on Safra? Says Campbell, “[I]f she recognises herself and thinks the cap fits, let her wear it.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.