Rereading, rambling & relishing - Part 1

What's your definition of rereading? I've been rereading a lot this year but the books I'm rereading are ones I haven't read for over 30 years in most cases. So, do they count as rereads if I read them so long ago or can I count them as brand new reads (for the purposes of my Top 10 of the year list)?

I've just finished listening to Dombey and Son, beautifully read by David Timson. I know I read this years ago because I have a battered old Penguin on the shelf. But, there was so much I'd forgotten. Dombey doesn't seem to be one of Dickens's best-known books. Looking at imdb, there was a TV series in 1983 with Julian Glover as Mr Dombey, Lysette Anthony as Florence & Zelah Clarke (my favourite Jane Eyre) as Susan Nipper. It's on YouTube but the soundtrack is out of sync which is a shame (it seems to be the same on the Region 1 DVD I saw a clip of so must be a fault with the original). I loved the story but the characterisations are very black & white. All the good characters (Walter Gay, Sol Gills, Captain Cuttle, John & Harriet Carker) are so very good & all the bad characters, especially Mr Carker the Manager (his sharp white teeth make so many appearances) are so obviously villains from the beginning. Florence is another of Dickens's unnaturally good girls & poor little Paul is doomed from the beginning with his "old-fashioned" ways. Edith Granger, the second Mrs Dombey, is a fascinating character. Brought up by a horrible, rapacious mother to entice men, any emotional life she might have had has been stunted from childhood & Mr Dombey deserves everything he gets when she refuses to be the compliant, grateful wife he expects. I didn't believe that she would run away as she does, though. The comic characters, especially dear Mr Toots, with his kindness & his inarticulate worship of Florence ("it's of no consequence") & fierce Susan Nipper, are a joy.

I read the Introduction to my Penguin edition after I'd finished listening & there was a reference to Kathleen Tillotson's book, Novels of the Eighteen-forties. Another book I remember reading years ago. I don't have a copy but borrowed it from Open Library. Published in 1954, it's still one of the freshest, most interesting works of literary criticism I've read. The first half of the book is a survey of the literary scene  of the 1840s & then Tillotson looks specifically at four novels - Dombey, Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair & Mary Barton as representing the different kinds of novels published in the decade. I especially enjoyed her discussion about why we shouldn't lump all Victorian novels together. The novels of the 1840s couldn't have been published in the 1860s or 1870s when incidents like Jane's frank discussions with Rochester about his mistresses & Becky's methods of advancing herself would have been banned from the circulating libraries. If you're interested in Victorian fiction, I'd recommend this book. I was only going to read the chapter on Dombey but then I read the chapters on the other novels & then went back to the beginning & read the first half of the book. I've read Jane Eyre many times & Vanity Fair & Mary Barton once but now I really want to read Mary Barton again. More rereading.

I was also reminded of another classic book of Dickens criticism which I have not read, but was able to borrow from Open Library, The Dickens World by Humphry House.

Then, I was pushed forward from the 1840s to the 1940s by reading Mrs Miniver's Daughter's post on the 70th anniversary of Brief Encounter, one of my favourite movies. The mention of the Kate O'Brien novel Laura has just borrowed from Boots reminded me of Nicola Beauman's book, A Very Great Profession (originally Virago, now Persephone). Nicola Beauman saw Brief Encounter & wondered what else Laura was reading & her research became AVGP. I watched the movie again last weekend (I tried to see which O'Brien it was - I decided it must be a mid-1930s O'Brien because that's when the play was written, so The Ante-Room or Mary Lavelle - among other things but failed. Maybe if I saw it on the big screen...) & reread the book.

I also need to stop listening to podcasts (damn the BBC!). I've just listened to a Woman's Hour special celebrating the life of Marguerite Patten, the cookery writer who was so closely associated with the Ministry of Food during WWII (you can listen to it here). She died recently aged 99 & they replayed an interview with her, which included cooking quail parcels & Eve's pudding, from 2009. Well, that made me want to read about the Home Front which reminded me of an article I read recently about a new TV series in the UK called Home Fires, about the Women's Institute during the war. It's based on the book Jambusters by Julie Summers &, even though I have a whole shelf of books about WWII on the tbr shelves, this is the one I want to read. At least we have a couple of copies in my library's collection but they're both on loan - I should be glad our patrons have such excellent taste but I'm just irritated that they got in before me. So, I've downloaded the free Kindle sample & reserved the book.

This post is much too long & I have more rambling & relishing to do so come back tomorrow for Part 2.

The Blush & other stories - Elizabeth Taylor

Desperate Reader’s enthusiastic review of The Blush by Elizabeth Taylor a few weeks ago sent me to the tbr shelves to grab my own copy. I’m sorry to say it had been languishing there since 1994. I’ve certainly proved the worth of my tbr shelves this year. This year of buying fewer books has been studded with the discovery of books I bought so long ago with every intention of reading immediately but, only now, after reading a review or suddenly being seized with an enthusiasm for the author or period, getting around to reading them. Elizabeth Taylor is an author I’ve read with great enjoyment over the years. I’ve read several of her novels, At Mrs Lippincote’s is an especial favourite, but although I have a couple of volumes of her short stories on the shelves, until this year I haven’t read many short stories. I always thought I wasn’t a fan although I seem to have collected quite a few volumes. Like many fellow bloggers, I find it almost impossible to leave a Virago in a second-hand bookshop & The Blush was one of these. I often choose short stories as my lunchtime reading at work & last week, I read The Blush.

Desperate Reader highlighted Perhaps A Family Failing as her favourite story & I certainly agree that the picture of a disastrous wedding night was funny & tragic. I found the picture of the bride, reading women’s magazines to find out how to be a wife so sad. Her pathetic insistence on all the proprieties during their courtship, keeping him at arms length, conducting the whole relationship as instructed by Women’s Own was heartbreaking. The wedding was everything, the reason for the relationship. She hadn’t given a thought to what came after, apart from buying a chiffon nightie to tempt her husband on the honeymoon. She thought that would guarantee the success of the marriage. Did these two people know each other at all?

My favourite story was The Letter Writers. Emily, a spinster living in an English village, has been writing to Edmund, a writer living in Rome, for years. They’ve never met until now, when he’s visiting England & proposes a visit. They’ve built up an image of each other & of their lives & Emily is apprehensive about meeting him. She lives her life in anticipation of writing to him. Incidents of village life become amusing stories for her letters. Even when she visited Rome, she had avoided seeing him, unwilling to break the spell. As she prepares for his visit, Emily remembers their wonderful correspondence. She becomes almost frightened of the meeting, they know each other so well yet not at all,

‘He knows too much about me, so where can we begin?’ she wondered. She had confided such intimacies in him. At that distance, he was as safe as the confessional, with the added freedom from hearing any words said aloud. She had written to his mind only. He seemed to have no face, & certainly no voice... She had been so safe with him. They could not have wounded one another, but now they might.

This story was based on a relationship Taylor had with a young writer, Robert Liddell, who lived in Greece. They were both apprehensive about meeting after a long, intimate correspondence. Luckily, they liked each other in person as well as on the page. Emily & Edmund’s meeting isn’t as successful as Emily descends into small talk & confusion, not helped by her cat eating the lobster that was destined for lunch. There are several cats in these stories. Elizabeth Taylor was obviously a cat lover & knew the havoc they can wreak.

I enjoyed reading these stories & if you’re a lover of the middlebrow short story, I’d recommend The Blush. If you would like to explore Taylor's short stories in more depth, I can also recommend Nicola Beauman's biography, The Other Elizabeth Taylor. As well as a fascinating biography of a very private woman, Beauman concentrates on the short stories as they have been very little written about in the critical works on Taylor.

There's a copy of Blush and Other Stories, and other books by Elizabeth Taylor, available at Anglophile Books.

Persephone Books

I'm going to write the occasional post about an author or publisher or journal that has changed the way I read. The first one just has to be about Nicola Beauman's Persephone Books. One of the luckiest internet searches I ever did was about 10 years ago. I was looking for the Virago website (turned out there wasn’t one then) & found Persephone Books instead. Nicola Beauman had started Persephone just the year before to reprint the books she wrote about in her book A Very Great Profession, published by Virago in 1983 & reprinted by Persephone last year. Middlebrow novels, books that were sneered at when they were first published by some critics & had fallen out of favour since. Books that were incredibly popular & much loved. Books written mostly by women & mostly in the period 1900-1950. Books that have a less stridently feminist tone than the Feminist novels reprinted by Virago. Domestic novels - & short stories, diaries, letters & non-fiction as well. There were maybe 10 books published when I found Persephone & I couldn’t wait to get my hands on them. I ordered my first three, Good Evening, Mrs Craven by Mollie Panter-Downes, William : an Englishman by Cecily Hamilton & Julian Grenfell by Nicholas Mosley. I gobbled them up & bought three more, & three more... Now I have them all & a standing order for the new titles. The books themselves are beautiful. I probably don’t even need to describe them as a Persephone has become proverbial for a beautifully designed book, lovely to look at & hold. The plain dove grey covers with cream panels, the endpapers chosen to match the period of the book, the creamy paper, the introductions & afterwords written by distinguished writers & critics. Still, none of this would matter if the contents weren’t so exciting, so unputdownable. Persephone Books has broadened my reading & given me the most pleasure in my reading life over the past 10 years. I’ve discovered Dorothy Whipple (my favourite Persephone author), Susan Glaspell, Marghanita Laski, R C Sherriff, Vere Hodgson & the adult novels of children’s authors Richmal Crompton & Noel Streatfeild. Reading Persephones has led me down many reading paths & introduced me to the online reading group I’ve been a member of for the last five years & couldn’t live without. They also publish the lovely Persephone Classics, their bestsellers with bookshop-friendly covers. I’m half way through reading To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski, reviewed here & here. It’s a fascinating look at a side of the Home Front we don’t often see in books or movies about WWII. Deborah is a total contrast to the noble Cressida in Jocelyn Playfair’s A House in the Country (Persephone). This is certainly not Vere Hodgson’s spirit of the Blitz but all the more interesting for that.