Origin and Publication
According to Adams' account the idea behind The Meaning of Liff grew out of an old school game, and started when he and Lloyd were on holiday together in Corfu in 1978, during the writing of the first Hitchhiker's novel This idea would be used as part of the Not the Nine O'Clock News spin-off book Not 1982 (ISBN 0-571-11853-4), where they were headed "Today's new word from the Oxtail English Dictionary". The suggestion to turn this into a complete book in itself came from Faber MD Matthew Evans. The bulk of the text was written by Adams and Lloyd in summer 1982 in Malibu, California.
Essentially the same idea was used by the English humourist Paul Jennings in an article Ware, Wye, Watford, published in the late 1950s. Adams speculated that the teacher who originated the school game may have done so after reading the article. He sent a note of apology to Jennings. Fellow humourist Miles Kington defended Adams and Lloyd in his column in The Times, noting a difference in style between the books.
The book was released in the UK in November 1983, in time for the Christmas market. It was a commercial success for Pan Books.
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