The books I didn't quite get to in 2012

I think this post is going to become an annual event! Compiling it certainly encourages me to stop buying books for a while in the New Year. Every year I make the same resolution & my best effort was three months without buying a single book. After such abstinence, it was quite hard to get back in the habit of buying, but I managed it eventually! It is quite a good feeling, especially when I know I have so many lovely books on the tbr shelves - not to mention on the e-reader & at the library. It did lead to my wishlists at various bookshop websites getting longer, but that's a great way to remember what I want.

So, here's my list of books that I was desperate to read when I ordered them & was determined to drop everything as soon as they arrived on the doorstep & read them first. Only, I didn't & they're still sitting patiently on the tbr shelves waiting their turn.

Harriet by Elizabeth Jenkins had so many enthusiastic reviews from Desperate Reader & Book Snob, among other respected bloggers & friends & it's a Persephone so what was I waiting for?

The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher was recommended in my online bookgroup by Diana, Austen devotee & writer of the lovely blog, Light, Bright and Sparkling. In a flash, I'd ordered it & was determined to drop everything when it arrived, but I didn't, as you can see.

The first two volumes of Agnes & Elizabeth Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England was eagerly awaited & then completely ignored.

Desperate Reader's review of Arabella Boxer's Book of English Food only confirmed the fact that I'd been right to order it. It's been sitting by my reading chair ever since it arrived & I'm only halfway through the Introduction.

I seem to be collecting books about Jane Austen (I have two more on the way) but not actually reading them. Maggie Lane's Understanding Austen is one of these. Hopefully with the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride & Prejudice coming up this year, I'll be inspired to read this.

I read a lot of books by Dickens & a few books about Dickens in his Bicentenary year - but this wasn't one of them. I love letters & I hope to get to the Selected Letters edited by Jenny Hartley sooner rather than later.

Shamefully, I read no Elizabeth Taylor in her Centenary year although I enjoyed reading lots of reviews of her novels around the blogosphere. At least I've read quite a lot of her novels, just not in 2012. I couldn't resist her Complete Short Stories published by Virago & introduced by her daughter, Joanna Kingham, & even though Harriet reviewed it glowingly here, it's got no further than the Virago shelf of the tbr shelves.

Sylvia Townsend Warner is another writer that I want to read more of. Simon reviewed this volume of her Selected Writings called With the Hunted & I was keen to read it, especially the section on Jane Austen (see above). I don't promise to read the whole book this year but I will at least read Sylvia's thoughts on Jane. I can console myself with the thought that Simon hasn't read it all either - or, at least, he hadn't when he reviewed it in August.

Well, there you have this year's list. Writing a post like this does spur me on to read the books. Last year, I read all but two of the books in the 2011 list.

Happy New Year to everyone. Here's to a happy, healthy year with lots of reading - & a bit less book buying!

On not sticking to a schedule

I love taking part in group reads. I belong to a Yahoo 19th century book group which has been responsible for introducing me to some wonderful books by authors I'd never heard of like Allen Raine & Elinore Pruitt Stewart to name just two. I'm also a member of another online group & among much book talk & talk of every kind on topics from marmalade to hats, we occasionally decide to read a Victorian novel in instalments.

As Barnaby Rudge is my last unread Dickens novel, I suggested we read it after some of us had enjoyed Martin Chuzzlewit earlier in the year. I drew up the schedule (about 60pp a week) & started with the best intentions. Well, you know what they say about good intentions! Two weeks in & I'm already half way through. I'm loving it. How could I ever have thought this book would be boring & stodgy? It's the title. Barnaby Rudge  sounds very dull, reminds me of stodge & grunge. It's true that titles have a great influence on whether or not we pick up a book. Anyway, I'm racing through Barnaby, probably because I know nothing about the plot so I'm eager to know what happens next. Stopping at the end of an instalment just wasn't going to happen.

The first half is very melodramatic - two unsolved murders, a woman tormented by a figure from her past, star-crossed lovers, one Catholic & one Protestant, a young man running off to join the Army & Grip the raven, my favourite character. Grip was based on a pet raven that Dickens owned & he's wonderful. I'm sure he's taking notice of everything that goes on & will have a key role to play at the end. We're just getting in to the political part of the plot now with the Gordon anti-Catholic riots on the horizon.

So, I haven't finished a book this week & instead of a review, I thought I'd share a few recent purchases (I don't know how these books appear on the doorstep. They just creep in, one or two at a time...) & some reprints to look forward to over the next few months.

I already have a copy of E M Delafield's Diary of a Provincial Lady. It's one of my favourite books & I always remember laughing all the way through the first time I read it. I couldn't resist this remaindered copy with the Cath Kidston cover & an Introduction by Jilly Cooper.

I got my tax refund a couple of weeks ago so I treated myself to the first two volumes of Agnes & Elizabeth Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England. I've always wanted to read these & Cambridge University Press have brought them back into print as part of their POD Cambridge Library Collection. They're not cheap but they're substantial books (over 600pp each) & these two volumes from Matilda of Flanders to Anne Boleyn are the lives I've always wanted to read.

Then, a book I preordered some time ago arrived, Vintage Cakes by Jane Brocket. I love baking cakes & this book is lovely. Vintage recipes with gorgeous retro photography. I can't wait to sit down with a cup of tea & plan which cake, slice or biscuit to try first.

I love preordering books. Virago are reprinting Angela Thirkell & Rumer Godden over the next few months & I've ordered the two Thirkell titles, High Rising & Wild Strawberries (aren't they the most gorgeous covers?)

as well as three of the Goddens, In This House of Brede (my favourite of her books. Even though I already own a copy, I couldn't resist this cover), Black Narcissus (more nuns, I'm fascinated by them) & China Court (have to read this after reading Leaves & Pages' review of A Fugue in Time here. I have Fugue on the tbr shelves so should really read it before China Court arrives). More beautiful cover art. How wonderful to have Rumer Godden back in print. I've only read a couple of Thirkells but I know her Barsetshire series is much loved, by The Captive Reader among others. Lots to look forward to.

Lives of the Queens of England - Agnes Strickland

I remember dipping into a complete set of Agnes Strickland’s Lives of the Queens of England at a local library years ago. I’d always heard of these books, they were in the bibliography of every royal biography I think I ever read as well as historical novels like those of Jean Plaidy & Hilda Lewis. I regret not reading them all from cover to cover so I was pleased to come across this book which is part of a series called Continuum Histories. Edited by Mark Bostridge (biographer of Vera Brittain & Florence Nightingale) it’s a series of extracts from famous historical works, selected & introduced by a modern historian. This volume has an Introduction by Antonia Fraser.

The Lives were actually the work of Agnes Strickland & her retiring sister, Elizabeth. The Stricklands were a remarkable family – another sister was Susanna Moodie, who emigrated with her family to Canada & wrote the classic book of pioneer life, Roughing it in the Bush. Agnes & Elizabeth were pioneers themselves in their use of primary documents & the meticulous way they conducted their research. Many of the documents they used had barely been sorted or catalogued so their work was an amazing effort in the mid 19th century. Their books were widely popular. Other titles included the Lives of the Tudor Princesses, Lives of the Stuart Princesses & Lives of the Bachelor Kings of England (a shortlived series because they discovered there were very few unmarried Kings!). They wrote readable, exciting romantic history underpinned by meticulous research. Agnes was the extrovert, enjoying her fame & the social opportunities it brought. Elizabeth was satisfied with her role as researcher & writer, very happy to be absent from the title page.

This volume contains extracts from the lives of Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I. The fall of Anne Boleyn is told in vivid detail & the author’s sympathy for her subject is obvious. A little Victorian moralising creeps in as Strickland admonishes Anne for triumphing in the death of Katharine of Aragon,

When the long-expected tidings of Katharine’s death arrived, Anne, in the blindness of her exultation, exclaimed, ‘Now I am, indeed, a queen!’... On the day of her royal rival’s funeral she not only disobeyed the king’s order, which required black to be worn on that day, but violated good taste and good feeling alike by appearing in yellow, and making her ladies do the same. The change in Henry’s feelings towards Anne may, in all probability, be attributed to the disgust cause by the indelicacy of her triumph.

I’m afraid I can’t agree with Strickland’s conclusion there. I don’t think Henry had any such finer feelings. By the time of Anne’s trial & execution, however, Strickland portrays her with more sympathy. She believes in Anne’s innocence of the charges of adultery & treason brought against her but blames Cromwell rather than Henry for her downfall. As Anne walks to the scaffold, Strickland’s feelings are obvious,

There also was the ungrateful blacksmith-secretary of state, Cromwell: who, though he had been chiefly indebted to her patronage for his present greatness, had shewn no disposition to succour her in her adversity. The fact was, his son and heir was married to the sister of Jane Seymour, Henry’s bride-elect, and the climbing parvenu was one of the parties most interested in the fall of queen Anne... Anne must have been perfectly aware of his motives, but she accorded him and the other reptilia of the privy council the mercy of her silence when she met them on the scaffold.

The other extract concerns Elizabeth I & the death of Mary, Queen of Scots. Strickland’s sympathies are with Mary here & she castigates Elizabeth for her unjust imprisonment of Mary & her undignified machinations in trying to avoid the responsibility for putting her to death. Her language here is gloriously over the top. I can understand why the books were so popular, they read like a novel compared with the drier, more cautious history writing of the time,

Her ministers pursued a systematic course of espionage and treachery, in order to discover the friends of the unfortunate Mary; and when discovered, omitted no means, however base, by which they might be brought under the penalty of treason. The sacrifice of human life was appalling; the violation of all moral and divine restrictions of conscience more melancholy still. Scaffolds streamed with blood; the pestilential gaols were crowded with victims, the greater portion of whom died of fever or famine, unpitied and unrecorded, save in the annals of private families.

Strickland tells the familiar story of the Babington plot when Walsingham’s spies & agents provocateurs facilitated the correspondence that led to Mary implicating herself in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth. Elizabeth is reluctant to sign the death warrant after Mary is tried & found guilty. She asks Mary’s jailer, Sir Amyas Paulet, to poison Mary secretly & when he indignantly refuses, she signs the warrant & then blames her secretary, Davison, for acting on it. Elizabeth wanted Mary dead but didn’t want to be the agent of her death. After the execution,

This dark chapter of the annals of the maiden monarch closed with the farce of her assuming the office of chief mourner, at the funeral of her royal victim, when the mangled remains of Mary Stuart, after being permitted to lie unburied, and neglected for six months, were, at last, interred, with regal pomp, in Peterborough Cathedral, attended by a train of nobles, and ladies of the highest rank, in the English court.

I enjoyed this taste of Strickland’s Lives very much. The Strickland sisters’ dedication to original research & the sources they discovered led to a renewed interest in history among readers. They were often writing the first biographies of some of the more obscure medieval queens. They were determined to gain access to libraries where women were barred & they often succeeded. Their fame led to offers of help from European scholars & libraries where they were able to research the lives of widowed queens such as Catherine of Braganza who retired to their native countries. They also travelled to many of the places associated with their subjects & discovered local stories & legends that might otherwise have been lost. Agnes & Elizabeth Strickland were literary pioneers & I’m pleased to be able to have a taste of their great work.