Juliet Gardiner’s illustrated biography The World Within: the Brontës at Haworth (Collins & Brown 1992) is a kind of companion to Penelope Hughes-Hallett’s ‘My Dear Cassandra’: Illustrated Letters of Jane Austen (1990) issued by the same publishers a year or two before. The two titles to me recall Charlotte’s reported antipathy to Austen. It’s clear …
Jane Austen: Persuasion Introduction and notes by Elaine Jordan 2000 Wordsworth Classics 2007 (1993) William Walter Elliot of his cousin Anne, after she modestly claimed minimal understanding of Italian: “one who is too modest for the world in general to be aware of half her accomplishments, and too highly accomplished for modesty to be natural in any other …
Jane Austen Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon Oxford World’s Classics 2008 “Blaize Castle!” cried Catherine; “what is that?” “The finest place in England – worth going fifty miles at any time to see.” “What, is it really a castle, an old castle?” “The oldest in the kingdom.” “But is it like what one …
Jane Austen Mansfield Park Penguin Popular Classics 1994 (1814) Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest. I’ve noted before Austen’s predilection for inserting her …
Jane Austen and the Clergy by Irene Collins. The Hambledon Press 2002 (1994). There’s a neat correspondence between a study examining Jane Austen’s models for fictional clergy, notably the snobby Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice, and the fact that such a study was undertaken by a scholar by the name of Collins. But this …
A repost from 5th May 2013 for Austen in August. Visiting Bath Abbey in April this year [2013] I chanced on this curious memorial on the east wall of the south transept. Close inspection revealed the name of one Elizabeth Benet (sic), widow of William Bathurst Pye Benet (died May 4th 1806), who herself died …
Classics date, don’t they? The archaic language can obscure meaning, contemporary references often require intensive research to make sense, and social customs can seem more irritating than quaint. Time then to bring them bang up to date, to make them relevant to the period we live in. Here are some title rewrites suited to a …
In this post, one of a series about Joan Aiken’s uchronia Midnight is a Place, we shall be meeting the people associated with Midnight Court, the mansion just outside Blastburn, an industrial town in the northeast of Albion. In this mini-prosopography there will be the inevitable *spoilers* but also much revelatory biographical and other material, …
Inverted Commas 6: Imperfect characters Though I describe imperfect characters (every character in this book will be found to be more or less imperfect, my pen refusing to draw anything in the model line) I have not undertaken to handle degraded or utterly infamous ones. Charlotte Brontë introduces her authorial voice into Shirley (1849) a …
Due to come into circulation on 14th September 2017, the Bank of England’s new ten-pound note features, as everybody may know by now, Jane Austen. Previewed back in July 2013 in a Bank of England video, the design was again unveiled to great fanfare two hundred years to the day after the death of the novelist, …
Henry James: The Spoils of Poynton Edited with an introduction by David Lodge, notes by Patricia Crick Penguin Classics 1987 (1897) This is an extraordinarily intense novella: intense in its use of language and intense in its unremitting focus on just two or three characters. First and foremost in the cast list is Fleda Vetch, a young …
P D James and T A Critchley The Maul and the Pear Tree: the Ratcliffe Highway Murders, 1811 Faber & Faber 2010 I deliberately began reading The Maul and the Pear Tree exactly two hundred years to the day that the horrific killing spree known as the Ratcliffe Highway murders began, on December 7th 1811. Four …
Jane Austen: Emma Edited by James Kinsley and David Lodge World’s Classics 1980 (1971) How much more must an imaginist, like herself, be on fire with speculation and foresight! — Emma, Volume III Chapter 3 Emma thoroughly deserves its plaudits as an epitome of the author’s skills. Its status as Austen’s longest novel and the …
Twenty-seventeen is the bicentenary of Jane Austen‘s death, with the climax of the celebrations arriving on the fateful day of July 18th. Austen lovers the world over will be adding their own appreciations — as I too will be doing, discoursing on Emma, the last of her books to be published in her own lifetime. I’ve posted a number of reviews, …
Jane Austen Lady Susan (in Northanger Abbey, Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon Oxford World’s Classics 2008) Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly, ‘Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy; … Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “to ask me is in vain, For who …
This Reading Life
a journey through the imaginative worlds of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings
writer * editor * publisher * teacher
Moonshine & Metaphysics
A seven-year journey
Because life is better served with a good book and a cup of tea. Book reviews and general bookish writings. I love many genres, so all manner of books may appear on my blog.
An utterly idiosyncratic view of the world, ancient and modern, with Peter Kruschwitz
a blog for all things bookish
Essays about books and the thoughts I have reading them
Old songs, new writing
Exploration of Literature, Cultures and Knowledge
Some of this. And some of that.
Read to live and live to read
diverse digressions and rambles on English archaeology, landscape and folk traditions with the occasional scenic diversions
"Vivre le livre!"
Thinking, writing, thinking about writing...
Classic Crime Fiction, Murder Mysteries, and Celebrated Sleuths
Adventures in reading
postgraduate literary researcher - writing (v.) about writing (n.)
Defusing bullying and raising self-esteem
Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads... And Books.
and other truths we learn from literature
For award-winning, internationally-acclaimed author Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-92). By Anthony Lawton: godson, cousin & literary executor. Rosemary Sutcliff wrote historical fiction, children's literature and books, films, TV & radio, including The Eagle of the Ninth, Sword at Sunset, Song for a Dark Queen, The Mark of the Horse Lord, The Silver Branch, The Lantern Bearers, Dawn Wind, Blue Remembered Hills.
Where the work and legacy of the much-admired writer lives on
An Exploration Of Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, & Myth
News and reviews from the world of children's books and libraries
A site to discuss and celebrate great children's books
Thoughts on stuff that interests me
Exploring the World of the Brontës, their Juvenilia, and Brontë Inspired Literature.
'I'm just going to write because I cannot help it'
NOT the social anthropologist. Though confusingly I did an ethnographic PhD.
A personal quest into the world of Children's Literature.
"Very wild through the wood is the way they must take"
Children's Literature Critic and Author of Books for Children
Dr Lizzie Rogers | Historian & Writer
My quirky take on women, and history, and women in history
Discussing the Liberal Arts
Reviews of books...and occasional other stuff.
library lovin', backlist browsin', SFF reader...
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver
There's always room for one more...
la revue des Têtes Imaginaires
Cartoons by John Atkinson. ©John Atkinson, Wrong Hands
Calmgrove 