Frankenstein and The Love Child

I'm very much enjoying your many and varied reading challenges/aspirations for 2012, do keep them coming!

Today I just wanted to share an amusing coincidence that I came across whilst preparing for my thesis.  I've just started writing up my latest chapter (I make enormously detailed plans - this chapter had an 18,000 word plan - and then build them into proper paragraphs) and it includes a little bit on Frankenstein.  Quite a few of you will probably be familiar with Mary Shelley's account of how the inspiration for Frankenstein came to her, courtesy of the 1831 Preface she wrote to her 1817 novel:

When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision, —I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. […] On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story. I began that day with the words, It was on a dreary night of November, making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream.

At first I thought but of a few pages of a short tale; but Shelley urged me to develope [sic] the idea at greater length.

Well, having read that, check out what Edith Olivier wrote about The Love Child in her autobiography Without Knowing Mr. Walkley:

Ten or eleven years ago I woke up in the middle of the night with the idea of a story in my head.  I had not thought of it before that moment, but it struck me as being a very good subject, and I immediately sat up and scribbled away for three or four hours.  I thought at first that it would be finished in one chapter, but when I began to write I found that it was going to be a much bigger thing than that.  Before morning I had finished two chapters of The Love Child – my first book. […]  I was sleeping badly at that time and I wrote practically the whole of that first book during those feverish wakeful hours when the body is weary but the mind seems to let loose to work abnormally quickly.  I have often thought that in wakeful nights one is quite another person to one’s ordinary everyday self.  One ceases to be human and becomes a tangle of the super-human and the sub-human.

Curiously similar, no?

Just thought that might be of interest... well, it beats telling you about all the sheep puns my friend Clare and I made up today.  Actually, that sounds equally interesting, now...

Reading Projects 2012

A Century of Books, and my regular blogging, has hit rather an obstacle - in the form of doorstopper The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver.  I'm not going to be finished any time soon, and a lovely New Year's Cold is putting paid to late nights. 

So I'm handing over to you to do my job for me today (ta!) - what are your reading projects for 2012? 

They might be group challenges, or tasks you've set in stone for yourself, or they might be vaguer hopes for your reading this year.  Perhaps you want to read more non-fiction, or older books, or... well, you fill in the gap!

As for me, alongside/within A Century of Books, I'm hoping to read more literature in translation, and more poetry.  Since I've read two or three books of poetry in the past five years, reading more shouldn't be difficult...

Is there any single book you're determined to read by the end of 2012?  For me, if I don't finish Eye of the World by Robert Jordan, lent to me by Colin years ago, I'll be pretty disappointed... I'm about 600 pages in.  And I started it nearly two years ago.

Book Society Review of Provincial Lady in Wartime

Every now and then I like to share contemporary reviews of much-loved books, and this review of The Provincial Lady in Wartime from a 1940 copy of the Book Society News looked like something you might all enjoy.  I like to make Stuck-in-a-Book have something of a scrap-book feel... and this is a fun way to do it!  Over to Edmund Blunden, and his review:

‘This is one of the occasions where expectation has been busy, and is to be abundantly rewarded.  Is the Provincial Lady as entertaining as ever?  There is no doubt of it.  Whatever else may be said about the past few months on the home front, they have been satisfactorily productive of the kind of conservations [sic] and encounters and minor comedies and tragedies which Ms. Delafield’s humour delights in.  From September onwards her quiet satire plays upon the worthies of village and town, and the experiences which have befallen (it may be) a good many of those who have been endeavouring to give their services to their country in the Emergency.

The Provincial Lady succeeded in the end, but it was a queer time until the official mind decided to make use of her talents; and meanwhile she had been filling her sketch-book with studies of Aunt Blanche, Our Vicar’s Wife, poor Mrs. Winter-Gammon (who claimed to have been, during the last war, a favourite of Lord Kitchener), the Blowfields, the mysterious but incompetent Monsieur Gitnik, and lots besides who will be seen to have flourished at this period.  There they are, doing so in her books, to be our recreation now and the discovery of future readers when the war has receded.  Let us hope to look back in some measure of serenity later on, and remind ourselves through these social pages that such were the themes, the rumours, the people of the second half of 1939; that there was a lighter side.

And, apart from all that the future will want to know about us, let all those who have recoiled from recent interviews with a sense of injustice – vague, burning or blatant – see how the Provincial Lady made them thoroughly enjoyable, and say, content with the artistic revenge, “Here’s my comfort”.  But sometimes a truly doleful note is struck, which may sound really like the horrors of war.  “An attractive pamphlet,” says Lady Blowfield, desirous of directing the literary energies of the Provincial Lady, “on the subject of Root Vegetables might do a lot just now.”

Then there is a Commandant who “lives in description” here so fiercely that some of us may be grateful for past mercies; but presumably the successful conduct of a canteen depends on such displays of energy and dictatorship as the Provincial Lady records with such unheroic candour.  Or does it?  There are signs of instability about this dictatorship by the fifth week of the War, and the Provincial Lady, when last engaged, appears to be winning the war of nerves.  But she finds other people who would be sufficiently difficult to disturb: the old lady, for instance, who arrives at Coxton Hall with a protest.  “She was paying a visit in Scotland when National Registration took place and her host and hostess registered her without her knowledge or permission. This resulted in her being issued with a ration book.  She does not wish for a ration book.  She didn’t ask for one, and won’t have one.”

But, naturally, this is a book of countless touches of the kind, and it is clear that the time we have just been living through was one particularly likely to offer Ms. Delafield the “minor calamaties of life” which she presents so easily and wittily.  I can scarcely think that The Provincial Lady in Wartime will fail of a big welcome even while we move from day to day under the vast gloom and insistent injuries of this war.  We may as well make the best of all the opportunities for cheerfulness and the pleasantly absurd while we can; and so, here is a first-class opportunity.’

Jane Austen by Margaret Kennedy

One day in, and the first book for A Century of Books is completed.  Truth be told, I read the first two-thirds in 2011, but spent this afternoon finishing it off.  It's a bit of a cheat, because although it was published 1950, it's one of those not-very-of-its-time books - being Jane Austen by Margaret Kennedy.

I was sorting through my books in Somerset and found a paper bag filled with books from my aunt, which she was either lending or giving to me back in 2004 (Jacq - which was it?!) and discovered this book in it.  I've yet to read anything by Margaret Kennedy (despite getting a lovely copy of Together and Apart for Christmas) and I had no idea that she'd written a book about Jane Austen.  Being in the mood for a little quirky non-fiction, I picked it up and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Apparently it was the first in a series called The English Novelists, and it is part-biography, part-criticism.  In fact, it's mostly an assessment of Austen's various novels - written by an unashamed fan, but one who is not incapable of pointing out what she believes to be areas for improvement.  Her views are unusual - how many of us would call Mansfield Park 'the most important of the novels, the most ambitious in theme, and the best example of her powers'? - but it's a good look through the eyes of an perceptive reader of the 1950s, to see how Austen was estimated sixty years ago.

Jane Austen is scarcely more than a hundred pages long, but Kennedy packs a lot in, with precise organisation.  In fifteen pages she covers 'The Background'; a wonderfully informative summary of the novels which preceded Austen's.  Then Kennedy covers 'The Life' in fourteen pages, thereby providing as good an overview as you're likely to encounter in many books ten times that length.  It is a more modern phenomenon to elaborate where details are not known, or invent suppositions where discretion is more flattering.  Austen's momentary engagement, for example, is not mentioned.  Was it not known in 1950?

The next sections onto 'The Letters', which are often held up simply as an example of the biographer's disappointment.  Kennedy is no different:

To search through these letters for any trace of the novels is a most disheartening task.  It is not merely that the books themselves are scarcely ever mentioned; there is so little trace of the material from which the books were made.  We feel as some archaeologist might, who comes upon some large and promising mass of fragments buried under a lost city once famous for its art, and finds that they are all shards of coarse kitchen ware; that every trace of sculpture, urns, tiles, tablets and inscriptions has been scrupulously removed.  It is with gratitude that we identify a few cooking pots.  There is a Moor Park apricot tree at Chawton; we remember one at Mansfield Parsonage.  Isabella Thorpe advised Catherine Morland to read The Midnight Bell; here is Mr. Austen reading it at an inn.

I do not entirely agree with this estimation of Austen's extant letters, but I love the image Kennedy devises.  I also love the sensitive way she explores the difference between Austen's early and later letters.  Like everything else in Kennedy's book, it's a speedy but excellent summary and assessment.

And then the chapters for which I was waiting.  'The Novels - First Period' and 'The Novels - Second Period'; 'Some Criticisms' and 'Jane Austen's Place in Literature'.  It's no secret that I love Austen's novels, and I especially like reading about her novels - an area understandably skirted around by those with a strictly biographical outlook.  In these, Kennedy gives quick outlines of the novels, before delivering her own verdict - always admiring, but never gushing.  She knows Austen's characters as well as her own friends and family - watching their actions, carefully considering their qualities, and understanding the work of the author all the while.

At twenty-one she has served her term.  She knows what she wants to say.  She has discovered how to say it.  First Impressions, afterwards called Pride and Prejudice, is written with all the fresh exhilaration of that discovery.  It has faults which are to disappear in the later books, but never again is she to write with quite the same vitality and high spirits as she does in this first spring of her powers.  They give it a quality which makes very many of her readers choose it as their favourite.

We are told that it was extensively polished, corrected and revised between 1796 and 1813, when it was published.  But its great merit must have been inherent in the first draft, since characters spring to life at once or never, and truth is one of the things which cannot be "put in afterwards."

I'm not sure I agree with this somewhat whimsical statement, but I would very much like to.  However, what makes Kennedy's analysis of the novels so worth reading is her own status as a novelist.  She writes of the characters with an authorial eye; she critiques their well-roundedness or believability with the voice of one who has striven at the same tasks and encountered the same obstacles.  I especially liked her imagined scenario of Austen considering Jane Fairfax as a heroine, and being gradually swayed to focus instead upon Emma Woodhouse.

In the final sections of the book, Kennedy considers views of Jane Austen from her death onwards, and is especially good on Charlotte Bronte's notorious bad-mouthing of Austen (without getting as vicious and biting as I would.)  I'm once again amazed that Kennedy can write so economically - covering such ground in so few words.

I cannot think of a better person to write a book like this.  Being both a novelist and an Austen addict, she has both the authority and the affection to write a book which is knowledgeable and perceptive, but never cold or detached.  Anybody who could write the following wins my approval:

Kitty is better managed; her complete insignificance is so well relieved by the untimeliness of her coughing fits.

Austen isn't lacking in admirers and there is no shortage of words written about her.  A slim 1950 hardback will probably get lost amidst the Tomalins, Jenkins, Le Fayes etc. - but I would definitely encourage you to seek it out.  As a reader and a writer, Kennedy has written a beautiful little book which is a stone's-throw away from an appreciation - but with an authorial acumen which prevents it being the enthused ravings of someone like me, who, without Kennedy's restraint, would doubtless fill all 107 pages with the single sentence I LOVE YOU, JANE AUSTEN, I FLIPPIN' LOVE YOU.

A Century of Books has got off to a good start!

A Century of Books

 
I have set myself the 2012 challenge of reading a book published in every year of the twentieth century... here are the links to all the books I've read and reviewed so far!

1900 - Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
1901 - The Spinster Book by Myrtle Reed
1902 - The Westminster Alice by Saki
1903 - Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw
1904 - Canon in Residence by V.L. Whitechurch
1905 - Lovers in London by A.A. Milne
1906 - The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
1907 - The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit
1908 - The World I Live In by Helen Keller
1909 - The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies by Beatrix Potter
1910 - Reginald in Russia by Saki
1911 - In A German Pension by Katherine Mansfield
1912 - Daddy Long-legs by Jean Webster
1913 - When William Came by Saki
1914 - What It Means To Marry by Mary Scharlieb
1915 - Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
1916 - Love At Second Sight by Ada Leverson
1917 - Zella Sees Herself by E.M. Delafield
1918 - Married Love by Marie Stopes
1919 - Not That It Matters by A.A. Milne
1920 - The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
1921 - The Witch-Cult in Western Europe by Margaret Murray
1922 - Spinster of this Parish by W.B. Maxwell
1923 - Uncanny Stories by May Sinclair
1924 - The Rector's Daughter by F.M. Mayor
1925 - Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
1926 - Blindness by Henry Green
1927 - Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann
1928 - Time Importuned by Sylvia Townsend Warner
1929 - A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
1930 - His Monkey Wife by John Collier
1931 - Opus 7 by Sylvia Townsend Warner
1932 - Green Thoughts by John Collier
1933 - More Women Then Men by Ivy Compton-Burnett
1934 - Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
1935 - The House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen
1936 - Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner
1937 - The Outward Room by Millen Brand
1938 - Dear Octopus by Dodie Smith
1939 - Three Marriages by E.M. Delafield
1940 - One, Two, Buckle My Shoe by Agatha Christie
1941 - Country Moods and Tenses by Edith Olivier
1942 - The Outsider by Albert Camus
1943 - Talking of Jane Austen by Sheila Kaye-Smith and G.B. Stern
1944 - Elders and Betters by Ivy Compton-Burnett
1945 - At Mrs. Lippincote's by Elizabeth Taylor
1946 - Mr. Allenby Loses The Way by Frank Baker
1947 - One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes
1948 - The Corner That Held Them by Sylvia Townsend Warner
1949 - Ashcombe: The Story of a Fifteen-Year Lease by Cecil Beaton
1950 - Jane Austen by Margaret Kennedy
1951 - I. Compton-Burnett by Pamela Hansford Johnson
1952 - Miss Hargreaves: the play by Frank Baker
1953 - Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton
1954 - M for Mother by Marjorie Riddell
1955 - The Winds of Heaven by Monica Dickens
1956 - All The Books of My Life by Sheila Kaye-Smith
1957 - Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson
1958 - Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris by Paul Gallico
1959 - Miss Plum and Miss Penny by Dorothy Evelyn Smith
1960 - The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark
1961 - A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
1962 - Coronation by Paul Gallico
1963 - A Favourite of the Gods by Sybille Bedford
1964 - The Garrick Year by Margaret Drabble
1965 - Moominpappa at Sea by Tove Jansson
1966 - In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
1967 - The Joke by Milan Kundera
1968 - A Cab at the Door by V.S. Pritchett
1969 - Sunlight on Cold Water by Francoise Sagan
1970 - Frederick the Great by Nancy Mitford
1971 - Ivy & Stevie by Kay Dick
1972 - Ivy Compton-Burnett: a memoir by Cecily Greig
1973 - V. Sackville-West by Michael Stevens
1974 - Look Back With Love by Dodie Smith
1975 - Sweet William by Beryl Bainbridge
1976 - The Takeover by Muriel Spark
1977 - Injury Time by Beryl Bainbridge
1978 - Art in Nature by Tove Jansson
1979 - On The Other Side by Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg
1980 - The Shooting Party by Isabel Colegate
1981 - Gossip From Thrush Green by Miss Read
1982 - At Freddie's by Penelope Fitzgerald
1983 - Blue Remembered Hills by Rosemary Sutcliff
1984 - The Only Problem by Muriel Spark
1985 - For Sylvia: An Honest Account by Valentine Ackland
1986 - On Acting by Laurence Olivier
1987 - The Other Garden by Francis Wyndham
1988 - Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
1989 - Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy
1990 - The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
1991 - Wise Children by Angela Carter
1992 - Curriculum Vitae by Muriel Spark
1993 - Something Happened Yesterday by Beryl Bainbridge
1994 - Deadline Poet by Calvin Trillin
1995 - The Simmons Papers by Philipp Blom
1996 - Reality and Dreams by Muriel Spark
1997 - The Island of the Colourblind by Oliver Sacks
1998 - The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
1999 - La Grande Thérèse by Hilary Spurling

Books Read 2011

(an 'x' indicates a re-read - thanks, David, for pointing out that I'd forgotten to mention this!)

1. Howards End - E.M. Forster
2. And Furthermore - Judi Dench and John Miller
3. The English - Jeremy Paxman
4. The Skin Chairs - Barbara Comyns
5. Bonjour Tristesse - Francoise Sagan
6. Personal Pleasures - Rose Macaulay
7. A Kind Man - Susan Hill
8. Gay Life - E.M. Delafield
9. William - E.H. Young
10. Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
11. The Machine Stops/The Celestial Omnibus - E.M. Forster
12. At Large and At Small - Anne Fadiman
13. To Tell My Story - Irene Vanbrugh
14. Saplings - Noel Streatfeild
15. The Gingerbread Woman - Jennifer Johnston
16. A House in the Country - Jocelyn Playfair
17. Echo - Violet Trefusis
18. People on a Bridge - Wislawa Szymborska
19. As We Are Now - May Sarton
20. Love of Seven Dolls - Paul Gallico
21. Not to Disturb - Muriel Spark
22. The Return of the Native - Thomas Hardy
23. The Perfect Pest - Adiran Porter
24. Mr. Chartwell - Rebecca Hunt
25. Countess Under the Stairs - Eva Ibbotson
26. The Caravaners - Elizabeth von Arnim
27. Broderie Anglaise - Violet Trefusis
28. The Thought-Reading Machine - Andre Maurois
29. Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
30. Going Postal - Terry Pratchett
31. The Unbearable Bassington - Saki
32. Virginia - Jens Christian Grondahl
33. A View From Downshire Hill -Elizabeth Jenkins
34. A Truth Universally Acknowledged - (ed.) Susannah Carson
35. Illyrian Spring - Ann Bridge
36. Jennie - Paul Gallico
x37. Mr. Pim Passes By - A.A. Milne
38. Life Among the Savages - Shirley Jackson
39. How Can You Bear To Be Human? - Nicolas Bentley
40. Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
41. The Slaves of Solitude - Patrick Hamilton
42. The Lady and the Little Fox Fur - Violette Leduc
43. The Lottery and other stories - Shirley Jackson
x44. The Love-Child - Edith Olivier
x45. I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith
x46. Lady Into Fox - David Garnett
x47. The Taming of the Shrew - William Shakespeare
x48. Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner
49. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
50. The Element of Lavishness - William Maxwell and Sylvia Townsend Warner
51. The Triumphant Footman - Edith Olivier
52. The Town in Bloom - Dodie Smith
53. Lipstick - Lady Kitty Vincent
54. Sylvia & David - the letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and David Garnett
55. Gin & Ginger - Lady Kitty Vincent
56. Dearest Jean - Rose Macaulay
57. Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner
58. A Fairy Leapt Upon My Knee - Bea Howe
59. People Who Say Goodbye - P.Y. Betts
60. Shaving Through the Blitz - G.W. Stonier
61. Exercises in Style - Raymond Queneau
62. Memento Mori - Muriel Spark
63. Red Pottage - Mary Cholmondeley
64. Westwood - Stella Gibbons
65. One Day - David Nicholls
66. Live Alone and Like It - Marjorie Hillis
67. Without Knowing Mr. Walkley - Edith Olivier
68. The Tiny Wife - Andrew Kaufman
69. Prison to Praise - Merlin Carothers
70. Safety Pins - Christopher Morley
71. A Baker's Dozen - Llewelyn Powys
72. The Earth Hums in B Flat - Mari Strachan
73. The Misses Mallett - E.H. Young
x74. Still-William - Richmal Crompton
75. Common or Garden Crime - Sheila Pim
76. Christopher and Columbus - Elizabeth von Arnim
77. Our Hearts Were Young and Gay - Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimborough
78. The Love Affairs of a Bibliomania - Eugene Field
79. The Invention of Morel - Adolfo Bioy Casares
x80. William the Good - Richmal Crompton
81. Singled Out - Virginia Nicholson
82. Two Serious Ladies - Jane Bowles
83. Appius and Virginia - G.E. Trevelyan
x84. The Backward Shadow - Lynne Reid Banks
x85. The L-Shaped Room - Lynne Reid Banks
86. Living Alone - Stella Benson
87. Night Thoughts of a Country Landlady - Edith Olivier
88. Here's How - Virginia Graham
x89. The Venetian Glass Nephew - Elinor Wylie
x90. Two Is Lonely - Lynne Reid Banks
91. The Pearl - John Steinbeck
92. The Man Who Was Thursday - G.K. Chesterton
93. So Long, See You Tomorrow - William Maxwell
94. Up At The Villa - W. Somerset Maugham
95. The Double - Fyodor Dostoevsky
96. The Amorous Bicycle - Mary Essex
97. Wasted Womanhood - Charlotte Cowdroy
x98. Miss Hargreaves - Frank Baker
99. The House - Richmal Crompton
100. Let Not The Waves of the Sea - Simon Stephenson
101. A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennesse Williams
102. Nella Last's Peace - Nella Last
103. A Covenant With Death - Stephen Becker
104. Stop What You're Doing and Read This - various
105. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
106. Eats, Shoots and Leaves - Lynne Truss

"When we lose ourselves in a book..."

I don't think I'm going to do a traditional review of the lovely bookish essay collection Stop What You're Doing And Read This! - I'm just going to continue quoting pieces from it now and then, because there are so many wonderful little snippets from it.  And I'll try to find nice paintings of readers to accompany them (and do my best not just to copy Harriet's!) The first post was here; today's comes from author Nicholas Carr (and the painting is anonymous, unsold at a 2010 auction):

"It is only when we leave behind the incessant busyness of our lives in society that we open ourselves to literature's transformative emotional power.  That doesn't mean that reading is antisocial.  The central subject of literature is society, and when we lose ourselves in a book we often receive an education in the subtleties and vagaries of human relations.  Several studies have shown that reading tends to make us more empathetic, more alert to the inner lives of others.  The reader withdraws in order to connect more deeply."

--Nicholas Carr, 'The Dreams of Readers'

Stop What You're Doing And Read This!