tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19063759091061238672012-01-28T15:25:54.758ZTanya Izzard's book blogTanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1861100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-31347649122304501492012-01-28T11:01:00.000Z2012-01-28T11:09:04.139Z

It's Henry Green Week in literary blogworld, prompted by winstonsdad, and my choice from Green's nine novels is Loving, a 1945 novel set in an Irish country house during the Second World War.  Like most Irish country houses at that time it is owned by an English family, the Tennants, and mainly staffed by English servants.  Only widowed Mrs Tennant, her daughter-in-law Violet and Violet's two

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-85216276672122906002012-01-22T19:33:00.001Z2012-01-22T19:33:46.298Z

This 1919 novel is a strongly autobiographical Bildungsroman that takes Sinclair's heroine from rural Essex in the 1860s, the youngest child of middle-class parents, to middle age in Edwardian Yorkshire.  On the way she will live through the difficulties of getting an education, the possibilities of marriage, and above all the demands and complexities of family life.  Mary has three older

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-81650003118312452012-01-09T22:19:00.000Z2012-01-09T22:19:41.151Z

This collection, aside from the title story which takes us back to Howling before Flora Poste tidied up the unruly Starkadders, is rooted in the middle-class world of 1930s England.  Spinsters retire to country cottages, bohemian types are satirised, fey girls find suitable husbands, and intergenerational tensions simmer in suburbia.  This might be to do with the magazines that first carried

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-63252725525844816112012-01-05T18:00:00.000Z2012-01-05T18:00:04.477Z

This 1932 comedy of manners is set in Durham Square, a respectable if not yet fashionable London address populated with exactly the sort of people you might expect to find in an E.F. Benson novel.  Chief among these is Mrs Mantrip, who owns most of the freeholds in the square; her clergyman father, with reformist zeal and deep pockets, bought up the property in order to evict the prostitutes who

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-69366716883142380352012-01-01T11:55:00.001Z2012-01-02T22:08:07.464Z

A happy new year to anyone reading this.  New Year's Day has turned my thoughts to good resolutions. While adding my Christmas book bounty to LibraryThing, I've been made forcibly aware of the number of unread books in my collection.  There are 138 of them in a library of just under 1100 books - so about 13% of my books have yet to be read.   I've selected 50 of these titles to read during 2012

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-80647940215437317602011-12-31T14:41:00.003Z2011-12-31T16:12:43.472Z

It's time to accept that I'm not going to finish another book before the end of the year.  Here are 2011's facts and figures: How many books read in 2011? 75, 35 of which are reviewed here.   Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio? 45 fiction, 30 non-fiction; I've read more non-fiction this year. Male/Female authors? 14 male authors and therefore 61 female authors; about the same proportion as last

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-34408046929139672132011-12-24T16:56:00.000Z2011-12-24T16:56:00.312Z

This is the first novel of the prolific Naomi Royde-Smith, who published a large number of novels, plays, non-fiction and anthologies, as well as working as a reviewer,  but now appears to be pretty much forgotten; she doesn't even have a Wikipedia page.  Royde-Smith was part of interwar London literary society, intimately involved with Walter de la Mare and Rose Macaulay, making the obligatory

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-84524241824540531072011-12-23T15:09:00.000Z2011-12-23T15:09:00.460Z

This little 1908 novel is the story of a murder; rather unexpected from E.F. Benson who I know best for the Lucia books.  Morris Assheton is a young man from a wealthy background; his inheritance is held in trust until his twenty-fifth birthday, unless he marries before that date.  The trustees are Mr Taynton and Mr Mills, the family solicitors.  Mr Taynton is an agreeable, avuncular sort;

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-40699710527259281142011-12-22T14:00:00.000Z2011-12-22T14:00:05.224Z

This 1939 anthology was Delafield's last collection of short stories and comprises a varied selection - some short, funny squibs, some longer pieces both comic and tragic,  and a rare Delafield outing into crime fiction.  Like a lot of writers, Delafield extended her range in short fiction, so as well as her familiar territory of matrimony and domesticity, these stories cover boarding-houses,

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-21662687618041797292011-12-17T16:20:00.001Z2011-12-17T16:20:16.371Z

Miss Mole was a kind present from Simon at Stuck-in-a-Book, who discovered I'd never read it, happened upon a secondhand copy straight away, and sent it to me.  He thought I would enjoy it, and he was entirely right. Hannah Mole is a forty-year-old spinster, the daughter of a Somerset farmer who has earned her living by working in that ambiguous, intermediate form of service that comprises

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-19367322163214648082011-12-04T10:20:00.000Z2011-12-04T10:20:00.194Z

This novel, the fourth that Stella Gibbons published, is a sort of reverse Cold Comfort Farm.  Miss Bertie Linsey and her Pa have been living in a village just outside London and running a greengrocer's shop for years.  But the shop has failed, due to competition from more modern retailers and the departure of Bertie's brother Sam - the business brain of the family - to South Africa.  They have

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-30694893947517907222011-12-03T15:14:00.000Z2011-12-03T15:14:00.585Z

Subtitled Elegy for an Obsessive Love, this memoir tells the story of Miranda's father George and his lifelong, demented, all-consuming passion for a Nottinghamshire manor house, Thrumpton Hall - and of Miranda's childhood and upbringing in the context of that passion.  George was parked with a childless aunt and uncle, Charles and Anna Byron, at Thrumpton when he was a small child; his father, a

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-2285517410332808722011-11-30T14:11:00.001Z2011-11-30T15:14:07.607Z

This novel, set in 1938 but published in 1944, takes place mostly in the Thames houseboat of the young ladies of the title.  Leo, a trouser-wearing character, works as a writer of Westerns, while her companion Helen, a former nurse, now works as a medical artist, drawing operations and dissections. The two women are popular with the other river-dwellers  - including Joe, an avant-garde writer who

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-66749005171888450852011-10-28T11:52:00.001+01:002011-10-28T11:52:56.731+01:00

My knowledge of 1920s America is based almost entirely on a youthful enthusiasm for the work of Dorothy Parker and repeated viewings of Some Like It Hot.  Lucy Moore's "biography" proved to be an entertaining way to expand my limited awareness beyond the Algonquin Round Table and fictional cross-dressing jazz musicians.  Moore's biography is chronological, but she does not attempt to squeeze in

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-31892527173607553512011-10-20T20:05:00.002+01:002011-10-20T20:05:39.560+01:00

This novel is a witty, episodic comedy of manners with a wafer-thin plot concerning the courtship and early married life of beautiful Hyacinth Verney and handsome, if conflicted, Cecil Reeve, set in Edwardian London society.  Surrounding these two protagonist are a host of other characters, who both support and hinder their relationship.  Principal among these are the "little Ottleys", both well

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-69603836338912095482011-10-01T16:48:00.000+01:002011-10-01T16:48:51.738+01:00

A curious and at times ridiculous work, this 1934 novel careers through suburban domesticity, London high society, overwhelming passion for a place, and a fatal love triangle, with a substantial portion of sadomasochism on the side.  The heroine Shirin, sixteen when the novel opens, is the youngest daughter of a middle-class suburban family residing in Dulwich.  Shirin nurses a secret passion for

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-79415807949533609912011-09-10T17:27:00.002+01:002011-09-18T11:16:52.853+01:00

Emma Smith, author of The Far Cry and Maiden's Trip, has written a memoir of the first twelve years of her life, which were spent in Newquay in Cornwall in the 1920s and 1930s.  Emma Smith was born Elspeth Hallsmith, a terrible name for a small child with a lisp.  Her parents were middle-class but impoverished; her father's grandfather lost the family wealth in a speculation just before the Great

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-42979344880422363702011-09-04T12:17:00.000+01:002011-09-04T12:17:01.327+01:00

This 1925 novel deals, leisurely, with the effects of a family crisis.  The Nesbitts are a prosperous Bristol family (Bristol is called Radstowe in the novel) whose wealth is due to William Nesbitt's successful career as a ship-owner.  William has built up his business from nothing, having started life as a sailor, and he and his wife Kate live in a gracious white house that he determined to buy

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-58907575642579446162011-08-17T18:11:00.002+01:002011-08-17T18:11:00.293+01:00

Sheila Kaye-Smith was a prolific writer who lived for most of her life in East Sussex, and set many of her books there, drawing on the dramas of agricultural life;  Joanna Godden, published in 1921, was her first big literary success.  Joanna, "a mare that's never been properly broken in", inherits her father's farm on Romney Marsh, in 1897.   Failing to heed advice to get a manager to run it for

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-85453946575295349172011-08-15T14:45:00.002+01:002011-08-15T14:45:00.445+01:00

Years ago, I read my mother's library copies of One Pair of Hands and One Pair of Feet, as well as her Follyfoot series as a horse-mad child, but I'd never read any of her novels for adults until now.  Harriet Lane's introduction to the Persephone edition places this book alongside other iconic novels of young womanhood like I Capture the Castle and The Pursuit of Love, and thematically there are

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-81649663697934060452011-08-13T13:00:00.000+01:002011-08-13T13:00:09.443+01:00

Esther Hammerhans, a library clerk at the House of Commons in 1964, is looking for a lodger.  The lodger who arrives to rent her box room is surprising: he is Mr Chartwell, a huge, shaggy and smelly black dog.  For a dog, he has some surprising habits, including talking, walking on his hind legs, and having some sort of job that brings him to Esther's part of London.  That job has to do,

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-79218380871148041482011-08-11T13:21:00.000+01:002011-08-11T13:21:56.102+01:00

This little memoir, republished by Slightly Foxed Editions, describes an early twentieth century childhood with great verve and humour.  P.Y. Betts was born in Wandsworth in 1909 and grew up there, in a house on the road between a military hospital and a cemetery and opposite the undertakers; during the First World War her days are punctuated by military funerals.  Feeling a  need to formally

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-40543128657197286382011-08-01T18:30:00.000+01:002011-08-01T18:30:01.750+01:00

Last week I was lucky enough to attend a talk by Nicola Beauman, part of the Clifton Montpelier Powis Festival in Brighton, on rediscovering lost writers.  She told us a great deal about the mechanics of publishing, how she came to start Persephone Books (an unexpected legacy provided the capital) and how she goes about finding and publishing the Persephone titles, choosing the fabrics for the

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-33686206922939596782011-07-29T10:19:00.000+01:002011-07-29T10:19:21.374+01:00

Mackenzie's comic novel takes for its theme the complicated pairings, separations and new alliances among a group of more or less lesbian women on Capri (renamed Sirene in the book) at the end of the First World War.  His protagonist is the young and beautiful Rosalba Donsante, whose pleasure it is to absorb admiration, capture hearts, and break up established couples.  Rosalba is adored by the

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-12186433702913522142011-07-13T16:26:00.000+01:002011-07-13T16:26:12.128+01:00

Most people who have read any of Elizabeth Bowen's remarkable work will concur with Victoria Glendinning's assertion, in her Foreword, that Bowen is a "major writer; her name should appear in any responsible list of the ten most important fiction writers in English on this side of the Atlantic in this century.  She is to be spoken of in the same breath as Virginia Woolf".  Glendinning sets out to

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-35606781792536504042011-06-25T16:23:00.001+01:002011-06-25T16:32:44.853+01:00

Nicola Humble's book is a fascinating review of the way cookbooks have been written, presented and used in Britain since the 1860s; it also functions, extremely effectively, as a social history of cooking and eating.  Presented chronologically, each chapter deals with the most celebrated food writers - Mrs Beeton, Agnes Jekyll, Boulestin, Elizabeth David, Constance Spry, Jane Grigson - and also

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-63106471286823268882011-06-19T10:30:00.000+01:002011-06-19T10:30:00.448+01:00

Olivia Laing's book is a love-letter to the river Ouse in Sussex, a poetic blend of travel narrative, history and memoir.  After a personal crisis, Olivia sets out to walk the Ouse from the source to the sea, her backpack stuffed with cheese and oatcakes, on a journey of healing and discovery.  Her narrative takes in the history of Sussex around the Ouse.  We meet the amateur geologist Gideon

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-82875492658685260882011-06-17T11:10:00.000+01:002011-06-17T11:10:30.556+01:00

Most readers, and I am no exception, come to Radclyffe Hall's work via The Well of Loneliness, and that's where they probably stop - with a bookmark permanently lodged near the middle in a number of cases, no doubt.  I've just re-read The Well for DPhil purposes, after a gap of about twenty years. While I remain impressed with her bravery in writing the book, I still find the prose almost

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-51001208412540983252011-04-16T14:59:00.002+01:002011-04-16T14:59:00.603+01:00

Anna Richard's first novel is the story of Jean, an oversized baby born in 1920 who grows to giant adulthood by the start of World War II - a war which will bring her new opportunities for pleasure and pain.  Tormented by her ghastly mother, Wisteria, the child Jean is underfed and overworked in an effort to contain her growth.  Her size makes her schoolfellows afraid of her ("I broke someone's

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-91945551027824650782011-04-11T14:57:00.000+01:002011-04-11T14:57:47.431+01:00

My last post was about an unpublished novel by H.D., Bryher's lifelong partner; Bryher's own novel was published in 1920, during the early years of their relationship.   Bryher was the chosen name of Winifred Ellerman (1894-1983), the daughter of an immensely wealthy shipowner; she was part of the Anglophone literary circle in Paris in the 1920s; living in Switzerland in the 1930s, her house was

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-13852525314359420312011-03-28T19:22:00.000+01:002011-03-28T19:22:17.874+01:00

A review of this slim volume will help make sure March doesn't go by without a single post.  H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) is best known for her modernist poetry, but she also wrote a number of novels. Three of these, Asphodel, HER and Paint It Today are autobiographical works, not published in her lifetime, which function as romans à clef about her complicated emotional life.  H.D.'s  first

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-55632914809497510992011-02-28T12:40:00.000Z2011-02-28T12:40:57.572Z

Helen Zenna Smith was a pseudonym of Evadne Price (1901-1983), a jobbing writer whose career encompassed this novel and its sequels, romantic fiction, stage plays, working as a war correspondent for the People during World War II, and acting as astrologer for She and Australian Vogue.  She was commissioned to write a parody of All Quiet on the Western Front, but proposed instead a serious

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-39105657642585008722011-02-27T14:17:00.000Z2011-02-27T14:17:18.080Z

It's Persephone Reading Weekend in literary blog land, hosted by cardigangirlverity and Paperback Reader, who have some tempting competitions for Persephone enthusiasts.  I've read all my Persephone editions, but I did have a Penguin edition of High Wages knocking about, and decided this was a prime opportunity to give it a try. High Wages opens in 1912, when seventeen-year-old Jane

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-10951906626048417162011-02-26T10:00:00.000Z2011-02-26T10:00:02.189Z

I'd been meaning to read this for a while, having read other bloggers' enthusiastic responses to the book, and having greatly enjoyed Miss Buncle's Book, so was very pleased to get a copy as a present. Unfortunately, however, I found in Mrs Tim a rather disappointing hybrid of the Provincial Lady and Mrs Miniver. The diary form, Mrs Tim's domestic and social concerns, especially with her

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-18733159660628219302011-02-25T16:35:00.000Z2011-02-25T16:35:10.807Z

Without My Cloak was Kate O'Brien's first novel and this Victorian family saga draws heavily on her own family background in Limerick.  Limerick becomes Mellick in the novel, sitting in a sheltering, well-watered landscape called the Vale of Honey, and the home of the Considines.  The family dynasty was founded by Anthony Considine, a horse-thief, who comes to Mellick with a stolen thoroughbred

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-52508416472996858532011-02-21T15:40:00.002Z2011-02-21T15:40:00.226Z

Sheila Rowbotham's history of women's activism  covers the period from the 1880s to the 1920s, and her dreamers and visionaries are drawn from both sides of the Atlantic.  This makes her book extremely comprehensive in scope and allows her to tell us about a large number of women, some still well known, others new to me at least, who worked to effect social change and, in doing so, changed the

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-48091098768385246142011-02-20T15:40:00.000Z2011-02-20T15:40:01.423Z

This delightful little book comprises seventeen essays on the act of cooking, the frequent shortcomings of cookery books and writers, and the manifold betrayals that kitchen gadgets visit on the cook.  Julian Barnes moves elegantly from his own clumsy first attempts at cooking (tinned peas, tinned potatoes and bacon chop, anybody?) through an engaging critique of some of the better-known cookery

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-28909525578715570302011-02-05T14:40:00.000Z2011-02-05T14:40:51.941Z

This collection of short stories was published in 1945; thematically, the stories concern the psychic, social and material damage inflicted by the Second World War.  Many of the stories centre around houses changed by bombing, requisition, or disuse, and on the effect of these changes on the people who move around and through these houses.  A crack in a wall may act as a conduit to another world;

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-78389651855493241572011-01-29T15:05:00.000Z2011-01-29T15:05:50.353Z

Firmin is a lover of words, literature and film, a champion of alternative culture, a creature capable of great love and courage.  He's also a rat.  Sam Savage's book lets Firmin tell his own story, of how his early days nesting in the shredded pages of Finnegans Wake led to his literal consumption of books (Jane Eyre tastes of lettuce, apparently) and eventually to a voracious reading habit that

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-73442150040879661482011-01-19T12:46:00.002Z2011-01-23T09:01:08.919Z

I'm a big fan of Susan Hill.  I've been reading her fiction for years, listening to her on the radio, and was a devotee of her blog before she gave it up.  I once frightened myself silly by reading The Woman in Black while babysitting in a draughty, creaky rectory.  Usually, her books delight.  But Howards End is on the Landing delighted and irritated in equal measure. I can entirely see the

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-29981987842492028032011-01-18T12:00:00.002Z2011-01-18T12:00:00.447Z

This facsimile edition of a 1928 guide to modern manners was a joke Christmas present, but it has proved surprisingly enlightening, particularly on the use of visiting cards.  I've read about visiting cards in many novels, but have never really understood their function properly.  Irene Davison's lucid exposition explains this in great detail.  Visiting cards can be used to broker a social

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-74299638218415198842011-01-17T18:00:00.001Z2011-01-17T18:00:01.054Z

Or, the Provincial Lady goes much, much further.  Like her illustrious predecessor Sue Limb wrote this comic fictional diariy as columns for the Guardian Saturday magazine, where I first read them; she subsequently published four volumes of the diary in book form.  Dulcie Domum, our heroine, has much in common with the Provincial Lady: a writer living in rural Rusbridge, which might be in

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-11019372938736079212011-01-16T07:57:00.000Z2011-01-16T07:57:47.794Z

Susan Hill's new ghost story is a beautiful little book with an ornate cover that hints at the sinister events inside.  The narrator, Adam Snow, is driving through the Sussex downs on a summer evening when he gets lost, and finds himself at the deserted and decayed White House.  An ancient sign proclaiming that the garden is closed indicates that the place was once visited, even renowned, but the

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-23411248632535728162010-12-31T15:13:00.000Z2010-12-31T15:13:20.126Z

How many books read in 2010? Around 75 - there are nearly 40 books blogged here, a couple still to get blog posts, and the other 35 relate to my studies.  I've ignored books where I read only a chapter or two, and those I'm reading for the second time. Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio? About one-third fiction, which - given the number of critical and historical works that I've read this year - is

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-72414225767586223562010-12-28T14:38:00.000Z2010-12-28T14:38:08.298Z

I'm a long-standing admirer of Maupin's Tales of the City series, and his latest book continues the story of the band of friends and enemies linked to 28 Barbary Lane in San Francisco.  Mary Ann Singleton returns from Connecticut to San Francisco, her second marriage in ruins, to confide this and other problems to her oldest friend, Michael Tolliver.  Michael is still working as a gardener and

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-47565884165717298982010-12-19T17:41:00.002Z2010-12-19T17:45:41.694Z

This vast book gives an overview of the political and social history and at the same time reaches deep into the authentic voices of the 1930s, drawing on diaries, letters, and forgotten published texts.  In her preface, Juliet Gardiner acknowledges the various and partial ways in which the decade has been depicted: the long decline towards world war, the effects of the great Depression, the

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-87305540439206256022010-12-11T15:01:00.000Z2010-12-11T15:01:41.529Z

Anyone who has read histories of the interwar period in Britain will have come across references to this book.  Published in 1941, the book's stated purpose is "to serve as a reliable record of what took place, of a forgettable sort, during the twenty-one year interval between two great European wars".  Structured in thematic but chronological chapters, this approach allows Graves and Hodge to

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-57426906782997114962010-12-06T19:21:00.000Z2010-12-06T19:21:16.465Z

This year's version, at the prompting of the Victorian Geek: Using only books you have read this year (2010), cleverly answer these questions. Try not to repeat a book title. It’s a lot harder than you think!   Describe yourself: That Lady (Kate O'Brien) How do you feel: Slightly Foxed (Quarterly) Describe where you currently live: The Crowded Street (Winifred Holtby) If you could go anywhere

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-55251311972869919732010-11-29T17:12:00.000Z2010-11-29T17:12:55.463Z

I was delighted and astonished to win a subscription to the Slightly Foxed Quarterly in a competition at The Dabbler.  My first copy (Number 27, Autumn 2010) arrived a few days after I found out I'd won, and has been an enlightening and entertaining read.  This issue has several articles on forgotten writers - H.A. Manhood and Rupert Croft-Cook were new names to me - as well as evaluations of

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-28998501764121131352010-11-27T13:23:00.001Z2010-11-27T13:46:04.719Z

I'd meant to get around to reading Marilynne Robinson for some time, since her prizewinning work has been so much praised; I'm also drawn to writers who don't write that many novels, as it's usually an indication of quality.   Housekeeping is her first novel and deals with the orphans Ruth and Lucille and the adults who try to raise them in the isolated town of Fingerbone, by a lake and among the

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-45190358478500251602010-11-27T13:22:00.001Z2011-08-26T12:24:00.092+01:00

This book comprises three long short stories with a common theme.  Each story, set in a different period, considers the consequences of meeting the love of your life after your affections are promised elsewhere.  Firstly, we have The Wedding of Rose Barlow, set in the 1850s.  Rose is a young girl of sixteen, and her mother Rosabel contrives to have her marry one of her own old flames, their

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-79598338414140548572010-10-13T18:00:00.000+01:002010-10-13T18:00:03.698+01:00

Clemence Dane's 1917 novel attempts to persuade the reader that lesbianism is inferior to heterosexuality and that single-sex education should be avoided.  The former position is not particularly radical for 1917, and while Dane's representation of lesbian relationships might seem unusually frank to 21st century eyes, it is worth remembering that, for many of her readers, nothing sexual would

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-33762835704233467292010-10-10T17:38:00.000+01:002010-10-10T17:38:40.415+01:00

E M Delafield wrote The Suburban Young Man in seven weeks, and ten years or so after its publication suggested she should "never have perpetrated" the novel.  It gets a footnote to itself in Q D Leavis's Fiction and the Reading Public, as an example of the use of the 'surburban idiom' which QDL deplores for its lack of seriousness.  These are inauspicious omens.  However, the book isn't as bad as

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-90168546353281659382010-10-09T11:16:00.000+01:002010-10-09T11:16:49.466+01:00

I've been reading a lot of library books lately, and have therefore been exposed to the marks and traces of other readers.  The most amusing example I've found is above: this is the first page of F R Leavis's Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture, first published in 1930.  I particularly like the fourth commentator, who either can't resist the temptation to instruct while insulting, or vice

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-37611953862771239912010-09-08T21:30:00.000+01:002010-09-08T21:30:39.599+01:00

This novel, another one of Delafield's Edwardian period pieces, deals mainly with issues of social class and with parenting, with a couple of perhaps unwise excursions into genetics.  The Aviolets have lived at Squires for many years; they are dyed-in-the-wool rural gentry, related to half the families in the county, utterly traditional in attitude and utterly repetitive and predictable in

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-58762036851184202972010-09-04T15:30:00.000+01:002010-09-04T15:30:09.538+01:00

Jane Robinson's book surveys the development of university education for women in England, from its earliest origins in the 18th century until the start of World War II.  Robinson focuses mainly on the period from the late 19th century onwards, and includes an account of development of formal school education for girls, which led in turn to a demand for the opportunity to study at a higher level.

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-45716120333949327512010-08-28T16:24:00.000+01:002010-08-28T16:24:11.133+01:00

I'm just back from a few restful but productive days at St Deiniol's, Britain's only residential library.  The library was started by Gladstone to provide an opportunity for scholars to consult his personal library; 32,000 of Gladstone's books formed the core of the collection, and he left £40,000 in his will to develop the library further.  The current library building went up in 1902, and

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-4006618426348611142010-08-28T14:52:00.000+01:002010-08-28T14:52:14.991+01:00

Delafield's 1925 novel is part Bildungsroman, part family drama, combined with some ironic contemplation of the lot of the writer.  The Bildungsroman element concerns Paul Ellery, the oldest child of Mary Ellery and her husband Chas, a novelist.  Paul is around ten at the opening of the novel, and we follow him through family trauma, school and university until he attains the adult pleasures of

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-64563609203618283282010-08-17T18:44:00.001+01:002010-08-17T18:44:00.470+01:00

Another beautiful translation of a Tove Jansson work for adults, this was a lucky Oxfam Bookshop find.  In Jansson's usual cool and lucid prose, we read about Katri and her slightly simple brother Mats, who live in a small coastal village; Mats works, informally, at the local boatbuilders, and Katri worries over how to establish a secure life for them.  The answer seems to come through a local

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-21923712665459497362010-08-15T18:37:00.000+01:002010-08-15T18:37:03.832+01:00

Turn Back the Leaves does not start well.  Its first sentence runs like this: "In an era when hansom-cabs still jingled their way through the streets of London, and to the rollicking air of 'The Man Who Broke the Bank' and the rock-swing-crash of 'Ta-ra-ra Boom de Ay!' Edmunda Floyd and Charles Craddock fell in love with one another".  Not at all enticing, but thankfully things improve very

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-88765936665362256052010-08-10T10:08:00.002+01:002010-08-10T10:08:00.324+01:00

Another of Sarah Dunant's historical novels, this book is set in Ferrara in 1570.  At the city's Benedictine convent of Santa Caterina, a young and unwilling novice, Serafina, is resisting her induction into convent life.  For a while, she works alongside the dispensary sister, Suora Zuana.  Zuana has been sixteen years in the convent, entering when the death of her doctor father left her

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-70031066193203910892010-08-08T15:13:00.000+01:002010-08-08T15:13:41.582+01:00

Celia Robertson has written a memoir of her maternal grandmother, known in her final years as Sophie Curly, but who started life as Joan Adeney Easdale in 1913. Joan published three volumes of poetry when she was a young woman; her work was published by the Hogarth Press and received positive critical attention. By the time Celia was growing up, her grandmother was a drunken, mad bogeywoman

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-84448945714541216882010-08-03T10:39:00.000+01:002010-08-03T10:39:48.963+01:00

Claudel's novel (also available in English translation under the title Grey Souls) combines a mystery story - three young women will die during the course of the novel - with an extended contemplation of the workings of memory and the nature of truth.  Set in a village close to the front in World War I, the novel is narrated by the local gendarme, who is professionally involved in two of the

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-2831460331302278982010-08-01T13:19:00.000+01:002010-08-01T13:19:14.974+01:00

The eponymous Jill (or Jacqueline; Jill is a nickname and the character is referred to by both names throughout the novel) is the nineteen-year-old daughter of Pansy Morrell, a demi-mondaine who has made a career of living off various gentlemen friends in America, France and England.  Jill comes into the lives of two married couples: stockbroker Oliver Galbraith and his highbrow, fastidious wife

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-84539309991210362242010-07-05T18:28:00.002+01:002010-07-05T18:40:19.006+01:00

The Pelicans gets its title from the legend of the pelican mother feeding its chicks on its own blood, and there is certainly an abundance of mothers in the novel.  Sisters Rosamund and Frances Grantham have lost their own mother at the start of the novel; orphaned, they are taken in by their only relative, cousin Bertha Tregaskis, who prefers to be called Bertie. The sisters acquire other

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-1559100086435218562010-06-27T12:55:00.000+01:002010-06-27T12:55:07.425+01:00

In The Great Silence, Juliet Nicolson sets out to describe the two years following the Armistice in the terms of the cyclical sequence of emotions that accompany grief and mourning.  In chapters headed Wound, Shock, Denial, Release, Resignation and so on, she draws on personal and establishment archives, diaries and letters to bring us the authentic voices of the times.  The social and political

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-67673002833642802972010-06-26T16:26:00.000+01:002010-06-26T16:26:07.759+01:00

Over fifty years after her death, Marie Stopes's name remains synonymous with contraception.  There is a chain of private sexual health clinics in the UK that is still called after her.  Most people will also be aware of her pioneering work in sexual guidance, which first articulated for a mass audience idea that good sexual relations were at the heart of happy marriages, and indicated frankly

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-64190864054227912152010-06-11T17:00:00.087+01:002010-06-11T17:00:05.946+01:00

Miss Ranskill comes home, after four years on a desert island, to an England utterly changed by the second World War.  She shared the desert island with Mr Reid, the remarkably capable man Miss Ranskill always calls the Carpenter.  But at the start of the novel, the Carpenter has died and Miss Ranskill must bury him.  Inadvertently, she also buries their only knife, without which survival on the

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-34373235918298378632010-06-09T20:57:00.002+01:002010-06-10T18:50:43.306+01:00

Apparently, at this year's Hay Literary Festival, Antony Beevor suggested that "novelists ought to mark in bold type the bits they made up".  He might be mollified by Kate O'Brien's forward to That Lady, which states firmly that "what follows is not a historical novel. It is an invention arising from reflection on the curious external story of Ana de Mendoza and Philip II of Spain."  O'Brien

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-52821789417995599722010-05-23T15:19:00.000+01:002010-05-23T15:19:57.575+01:00

In this 1950 novel Stella Gibbons explores the little comedies and dramas of life in rural Sussex immediately after the second world war.  Alda Lucie-Brown comes to live at dreary, isolated Pine Cottage with her three daughters, Jenny, Louise and little Meg.  Alda's husband Ronald, a university lecturer, is still on military service abroad, helping with reconstruction work in Germany, and the

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-36296919502186980742010-05-22T16:44:00.000+01:002010-05-22T16:44:55.563+01:00

Marie Belloc Lowndes was a novelist, playwright and (auto)biographer and the sister of Hilaire Belloc; both children spent their early years in France and Marie retained a slight French accent throughout her life.  Their mother, Bessie Parkes Belloc, was also a writer and friend of such literary figures as George Eliot and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.   She married F S A Lowndes, a journalist on

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-45935361009344399932010-05-16T16:49:00.001+01:002011-04-14T19:35:18.757+01:00

I picked this up in an Oxfam bookshop in Suffolk because it was a Virago, and, as it turned out to be a diary novel, I bought it.  After studying the piano in Frankfurt, Ellen, a young woman of twenty, has returned to her family home in Edwardian Glasgow, where she is beginning a career as a music teacher.  She lives with her deeply religious Aunt Harry and her brother Ronald who is disabled in

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-6559582107938225052010-05-03T20:24:00.000+01:002010-05-03T20:24:03.179+01:00

Delafield's first novel is a bildungsroman that articulates a young girl's response to a world which very rarely seems real to her.  We first meet Zella de Kervoyou at the age of seven, caught out by her cousins telling tall tales, and obtaining relief by confessing to her mother the lesser crime of taking a chocolate from the dining room.  The main action of the novel takes place after Zella's

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-64407975762586509512010-04-20T21:58:00.000+01:002010-04-20T21:58:20.957+01:00

This is an early EMD from 1924, and one in which she experiments, rather successfully, with her narrative technique.  Narrated in the first person by a man, Sir Miles Flower, the novel gives his account of the love affair between Diamond Harter and Bill Patch, which was the main interest of the village of Cross Loman for some months.  Mrs Harter is the daughter of the late local plumber, who

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-24714751459640239062010-04-13T19:20:00.002+01:002010-04-13T19:20:58.209+01:00

In a narrative moving between the first-person testimony of the murderer, and a third-person narrative with an individual focus in each chapter, Susan Hill develops a range of characters, some of whom will meet their deaths at the killer’s hands.  The central character is Detective Inspector Freya Graffham, new to the small cathedral town of Lafferton.  Freya has recently ended a disastrous

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-43485719612587625112010-04-12T21:44:00.001+01:002010-04-12T21:46:12.013+01:00

This novel was thoughtfully provided amongst the books in a Suffolk holiday cottage because of its Walberswick location; I enjoy reading books in their geographical setting, so gave it a whirl.  The novel is a fictionalised account of the artist Philip Wilson Steer's time in Walberswick, the setting of many of his paintings (including The Bridge, shown above courtesy of a link to the Tate's

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-35765444422409131892010-04-12T19:26:00.002+01:002010-04-13T19:24:19.038+01:00

I picked this up second-hand recently and, being a bit of a Mitford completist, thought I'd like to read the story of the model for the Bolter of The Pursuit of Love.  Idina Sackville's life story is certainly fascinating; married five times and separated from her two elder children by the terms of her first divorce, she sought greater freedom as a colonial farmer in Kenya, where she was a key

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-45819526652830217982010-04-11T18:50:00.000+01:002010-04-11T18:50:58.272+01:00

One of EMD's earlier novels, this richly amusing book focuses principally on the generation gap between those who grew up as Victorians, and the modern generation whose values have been shaped by the devastating experience of the first World War.  Appearing for the Victorians is the optimist of the title, Canon Fenwick Morchard.   An elderly clergyman with five grown-up children, he provided a

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-41211891824404863082010-04-11T15:28:00.000+01:002010-04-11T15:28:12.394+01:00

I've waited a long time to read this, and in fact had just realised that, in possession of a British Library reader's ticket, I now could get my hands on it - only to find that Penguin were republishing it.  Nancy Mitford didn't want it published in her lifetime, telling Evelyn Waugh in 1951 that "too much has happened for jokes about Nazis to be regarded as funny or as anything but the worst of

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-88172205962608267342010-04-11T15:00:00.000+01:002010-04-11T15:00:58.100+01:00

This little book, discovered while poking about in the sub-genre of diary fiction, is quirky and rather fascinating.  First published in 1932, and available again now through the Library of Wales, the book comprises Ann Goodman's diaries with a preface and coda provided by the author.  Ann Goodman is a shepherd's daughter writing in 1850, her father English, her mother Welsh.  At the opening of

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-91828771811275489682010-03-15T12:07:00.000Z2010-03-15T12:07:42.880Z

This collection of short stories, first published in 1929, deals mainly with episodes from the lives of a variety of women - as you might expect - and a couple of men. Many of the stories focus on romance: proposals, affairs, temptations and partings often provide the dramatic pivot. Middle-aged women, often suburban, are exposed to romance directly and indirectly; apparently forty-three is a

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-65891093095572337772010-02-28T12:47:00.000Z2010-02-28T12:47:52.832Z

Delafield answers her own question by telling us of the complicated interactions of naive, beautiful Ellie Carey; her kind and handsome brother Lionel; her attractive, modern cousin Victoria; and the sophisticated Simon Lawless, laden with sex appeal and addicted to flirtation. In the margins of their story are Ellie and Lionel's scandalously divorced parents, George Carey and Fay Dallinger;

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-37232921650739434242010-02-17T18:19:00.000Z2010-02-17T18:19:31.150Z

I found this collection of Jan Struther's journalism considerably more engaging than her better-known Mrs Miniver. Written for a variety of inter-war journals, designed to amuse, these pieces must have piqued rueful self-awareness among Struther's readers as she delicately skewers middle-class pretension. Of course, she is not immune to this vice herself, and to the 21st-century eye some of her

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-77728268931240296342010-02-16T19:39:00.000Z2010-02-16T19:39:07.028Z

Poking about in the minor sub-genre of fictional diaries written for humorous effect, I discovered a reference to this little book, in which twenty-year-old Cleone Knox, of a wealthy County Down family, travels with her father, and brother Ned, on a grand tour of Europe. At the opening of the book, she is being courted by David Ancaster, whom she loves, but her father is against the match.

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-67623506710423666722010-01-09T16:19:00.000Z2010-01-09T16:19:50.140Z

Holtby's 1924 novel is the story of Muriel Hammond, brought up in Edwardian Marshington and Kingsport (a disguised Hull) to marry well and help maintain her family's social status. Muriel, however, is not a success in the marriage-market, but her sense of duty to her family keeps her at home, unlike the Vicar's dynamic daughter Delia Vaughan, headed for Newnham. Muriel is no iconoclast, and

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-61636978218816972302009-12-31T14:45:00.000Z2009-12-31T14:45:39.159Z

Thanks to Catherine for this annual round-up meme. How many books read in 2009? About 65, I think - there are 56 books reviewed here, I've re-read a couple, and there have been a number of critical works read for my DPhil that I've not blogged about. Fiction/Non-Fiction ratio? I've reviewed 18 non-fiction works and probably read 25 this year, so still getting on for 2:1 in favour of fiction. 

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-60473551957522411052009-12-31T14:06:00.000Z2009-12-31T14:06:48.392Z

A delightful little volume from the Hesperus Press, this book contains three of Leonard Woolf's short stories, all set in colonial Ceylon, and two extracts from his autobiography which describe his voyage out to Columbo and his experiences at the Pearl Fishery in Ceylon, experiences which find their way into "Pearls and Swine", the second story here.  First published by the Hogarth Press in 1921,

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-4269444371890835012009-12-29T15:26:00.000Z2010-06-10T08:22:53.288+01:00

Another Persephone reprint, William is the story of the sudden impact of war on two people who thought it could never possibly come.  William is a suburban clerk, suddenly precipitated into freedom by the death of his overbearing mother, who leaves not only their home, but a significant some of money.  William uses his freedom to devote himself to political life as a left-wing Internationalist in

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-66400958971159361222009-12-28T08:28:00.003Z2009-12-28T20:12:56.353Z

I've been meaning for a while to buy this book as a midwinter treat and read it by the fire, and having finally done so, I'm very glad I did. A Winter Book is a collection of Tove Jansson's stories and memoirs, telling of her early childhood with her artist parents, later life as a successful writer and as an old woman. Her childhood stories are luminous and bright, sometimes dealing with

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-85872768554534753022009-12-19T13:57:00.002Z2009-12-19T14:19:06.993Z

This is an utterly charming little book, published by Slightly Foxed, who, alongside their Quarterly, offer a small range of little hardbacks in numbered limited editions. The first half of the book contains Richard Kennedy's recollections of joining the Hogarth Press as a school-leaver whose education had left him with no discernable talents or abilities. Based on diaries and letters as well

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-53780454659188397192009-12-19T10:01:00.003Z2009-12-19T13:54:08.767Z

Ordinary Families is a rather odd book. It is narrated by Lalage, usually known as Lallie, aged eleven at the start of the story, and part of the entirely unordinary Rush family, which comprises four children: Ronald, Drusilla, Lalage and finally beautiful Margaret, whose family position and physical attractiveness mean she is indulged with more of everything, but especially love and attention,

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-57551595441701894032009-12-09T19:06:00.002Z2009-12-09T19:38:19.601Z

Taking its title from Alice's experience through the looking-glass, running ever faster only to stay in the same place, Faster! Faster! looks, like The War-Workers, at women who work outside the home, albeit with a less caustic and more considered approach. The novel centres around Claudia Winsloe, who runs a Universal Aunts type of business, coupled with a literary agency and transcription

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-35473632993263938092009-11-03T21:13:00.003Z2009-11-04T14:35:33.719Z

I've read other ICBs before, but not this one, and was inspired to turn to it by Stuck-in-a-Book's group read. Compton-Burnett's novels are often accused of being all the same, and it's true that they revolve around similar themes, in similar settings and similar forms. ICB's themes are the cruelty family members practice on each other in familial hierarchies with fathers at the top and

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-2830635434398438352009-10-30T10:41:00.003Z2009-10-30T19:26:38.740Z

Stolen from Kirsty at Other StoriesThe book that’s been on your shelves the longest.I think that is probably The House at Pooh Corner, an ancient hardback copy formerly owned by someone called Quainton from Harrow, who crossed out another dedication on the inside cover: "To Peter, from Audrey". Most of my early childhood books are at my parents' house, for some reason, including a full set of

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-44095631722601295532009-10-24T18:09:00.006+01:002009-10-26T18:23:16.727Z

This was Brittain's first published novel, appearing in 1923 a couple of years after she had left Oxford. It had a difficult route to publication, rejected by many publishers before Grant Richards took a calculated risk with it - calculated because Brittain contributed £50 towards the costs of its publication. The book tells the story of two young women. Virginia Dennison has returned to

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-9568015658804507792009-10-24T17:41:00.002+01:002009-10-24T18:08:15.921+01:00

This excellent biography expands on the best-known aspects of Vera Brittain's life, taking us beyond the more familiar stories Brittain told us in Testament of Youth and Testament of Friendship on to her later life as a writer, pacifist, campaigner, mother and wife. Paul Berry was a friend of Vera Brittain from their first meeting in 1942 until the end of her life, and the affectionate tone of

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-36089180713943266072009-10-12T18:36:00.003+01:002009-10-13T09:22:50.865+01:00

Vera Brittain's 1936 novel blends family saga and political analysis. Divided into three parts, the novel opens with a description of the lives of Janet and Thomas Rutherston. Janet marries Thomas, a clergyman, too young and too hastily; appalled by the realities of birth and motherhood, and desperate for an outlet for her talents and intelligence, Janet turns enthusiastically to the suffrage

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-3186236453356097462009-10-07T19:11:00.003+01:002009-10-07T20:02:20.690+01:00

The Bazalgettes is something of an oddity. Published anonymously in 1935, Delafield's work is a spoof Victorian novel, set in the 1870s, but dealing with a theme, as the preface says, that might have been chosen by "the most modern of present-day novelists". Twenty-year-old Margaret Mardon, a cheerful product of an unhappy marriage, has agreed to marry local widower Charles Bazalgette,

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-52456497981286949512009-10-06T21:03:00.004+01:002009-10-07T19:08:20.087+01:00

The Glass Room is a place of exposure and seclusion, safety and vulnerability, love and evil. The eponymous room is at the heart of the Glass House, the masterpiece of modernist architect Rainer von Abt, built as a family home for newlyweds Liesel and Viktor Landauer in 1920s Czechoslovakia; the room will adapt to use as a place of love, of safety, of joy, of horror and of healing as the novel

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1906375909106123867.post-46994894526248826002009-09-18T22:19:00.002+01:002009-09-18T22:40:52.706+01:00

Stolen from the Victorian Geek:Do you snack while you read? If so, favourite reading snack? I'd like to think that I don't. Favourite would be crumpets, I think.Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?I never mark books, even with pencil - I prefer to make notes as I go along or use page flags. Writing in library books will be punishable by

Tanya Izzardnoreply@blogger.com0