Jackie Collins

If there’s one thing people love, it’s getting their grubby hands on a manuscript that a writer never meant to have published. Perhaps the most infamous instance in recent years was the publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, the prequel to / early draft of (?) To Kill a Mockingbird. We covered it pretty extensively here on MobyLives. There was also Dr. Seuss’s What Pet Should I Get, and, more recently, Scribner’s publication of I’d Die for You and Other Lost Stories, a collection of previously unpublished work by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

We can’t seem to get enough of this stuff!

The latest (potential) addition to the canon of rediscoveries is a collection of early works by the author Jackie Collins. A different genre, sure — Collins “wrote the kind of novels that tweedy English professors typically ignore or sniff at—sex-filled, escapist, utterly unpretentious—but that millions of readers devour and teenagers used to read by flashlight under the covers at night,” but was iconic in her own way.

On Tuesday, the actress (and Dame!) Joan Collins appeared on“Good Morning Britain” and “revealed a set of secret books written by her late sister Jackie Collins could be released,” “Showbiz Reporter” Jill Robinson reported for the Sun.

“She wrote so many, she started writing when she was 11,” Joan said. “And this beautiful writing, if you could see this writing of an eleven-year-old, when you look at an eleven-year-old’s writing today, I mean, it’s like chalk and cheese… She was way ahead of her time.”

Chalk and cheese!