Su-Lin might be interested in this :)
'It's an interesting thing,' said Spruce, 'but very few of the great masters of trash aimed low to start with. Most of them wrote sonnet sequences in youth. Look at Hall Caine - the protege of Rosetti - and the young Hugh Walpole emulating Henry James. Dorothy Sayers wrote religious verse. Practically no one ever sets out to write trash. Those that do don't get very far.'
From Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour Trilogy (pp. 673-674).