Everything old is new again - in the digital world, at least

I had an email the other day from Corazon Books, offering me a review copy of Wonder Cruise by Ursula Bloom. Corazon are planning to reprint Ursula Bloom's backlist, in co-operation with her estate. Now, I don't think I've ever read an Ursula Bloom but I do remember her books in my library, especially in large print. Wonder Cruise was published in 1934 & is the story of a young woman who wins some money & decides to go on a Mediterranean cruise. It sounds like a good, romantic read & I'm looking forward to it. Bloom also wrote as Lozania Prole & Sheila Burns.
More details about Ursula Bloom & Corazon's plans are here.
Corazon are also reprinting Catherine Gaskin's backlist. I do remember reading & enjoying Catherine Gaskin so I've bought a couple of these over the last year & I'm looking forward to rereading them.

Delphi Classics have announced their next series of eBooks & the title I'm most excited about is the collected works of E M Delafield. Delphi do a great job of bringing together an author's work in a beautifully formatted digital edition at a very reasonable price. Other tempting authors in Series Seven are Frances Trollope & Mary Wollstonecraft.

I'd love to know if there are any Ursula Bloom fans out there. The LP books I remember were very pink & in my younger days, I didn't think they were for me. The reprints look as though they'll be aimed at a different audience &, of course, I'm older now than I was when I was shelving the LP Blooms. I doubt I'd be reading Georgette Heyer or D E Stevenson if they were still being published in those cheesy 1970s covers, not to mention some of the dire cover art I remember for Mary Stewart & Daphne Du Maurier! Times & tastes change though & we may be in for an Ursula Bloom revival.

All these reprints are very exciting. Recently there's been news of Bello reprinting Mary Hocking & Open Road reprinting Margery Sharp. Who will be next?

A book lovers idea of Heaven

First, some very exciting news. I mentioned in this post on Pushkin the other week that one of my favourite books when I was young was Mara Kay's The Youngest Lady In Waiting (cover photo from here). It was the book that began my lifelong interest in Russian history. It's the sequel to Masha, the story of a young orphan's life in early 19th century Russia. Both books were published around 1970 & are incredibly hard to get hold of. I read the copies in my school library & have always wanted to reread them. Well, Karoline, who commented on the post, asked if I knew that Margin Notes Books were reprinting both books later this year? Well, I didn't but I'm so excited! There's nothing on the website just yet but I'm so looking forward to ordering these. Hooray for another small publisher bringing back beautiful books. I have the Margin Notes Books edition of Five Farthings by Monica Redlich on the tbr shelves & I'm looking forward to reading it while I wait for the Mara Kays. Also, have a look at the publisher's blog, there's a link on the website. I'll be monitoring both blog & website very closely for the next few months.

I'm not sure if I should be mentioning this next fact as it could be evidence of serious derangement when it comes to book buying. I'm closing in on 1000 books on the tbr shelves (maybe I should have written 1000 books, does that make it seem less obvious?). Should I be whispering with shame or shouting with glee? I'll never be short of a book to read, that's for sure. I'm up to 968 (according to Library Thing) with several more books on the way even now. The trouble is, I'm seeing the magic 1000 books as a challenge that I must complete by the end of the year so there's definitely more glee than shame in my unrepentant attitude! I'll just mention quietly that this is only the number of physical books. The ebooks are also out of control but they're also invisible.

One book I bought recently was Summer's Day by Mary Bell. I'd been reading admiring references about it on Scott's blog, Furrowed Middlebrow, for some time now. From the original review to his search for the real identity of the author, to the most recent mention, when my resistance broke & I searched for a second hand copy (the Greyladies edition is out of print). Searching Abebooks sent me to Anglophile Books, where there were several copies of the Greyladies edition. I've been an occasional customer of Anglophile Books for some years now (unfortunately the postage costs from the US to Australia are quite high but I wasn't going to let that stop me on my quest for this book & may I say, it hasn't stopped me in the past).




Anglophile Books has the most wonderful selection of books for lovers of the middlebrow novel. Lots of my favourite authors - D E Stevenson, Dorothy L Sayers, Barbara Pym, Josephine Tey, Vera Brittain, E M Delafield - & many more. The owner, Laura, is also the convener of the D E Stevenson Yahoo group I've recently joined & she has very kindly linked to my blog on the website. If you have a look here, there are links to any books by my favourite authors that Laura has in stock. I'm not making any money out of the link, I'm just happy to point potential customers in the direction of a great secondhand bookshop.

Edited to add: Laura from Anglophile Books has created that little button which I am thrilled to say I have just successfully added to the post (thanks for the instructions, Laura). So, I'll add the button to my post if Anglophile Books has a copy of a book I'm reviewing (& gradually go back through the archive) & you'll be taken straight to the homepage if you're interested in buying a copy. I feel quite technologically competent all of a sudden!

Two themed reading weeks are coming up in the next few months that I'm very excited about. Anbolyn at Gudrun's Tights is hosting a Mary Stewart reading week from September 14th to 21st in honour of the novelist who died earlier this year. I've been planning to reread Mary Stewart ever since the last lot of reprints were published but I haven't gotten very far. However, I have lots of her novels on my shelves (no excuse there for buying more books), & I plan to read at least one for that week.

Margaret Kennedy is an author who has been on the periphery of my reading world for quite some time. I've only read The Constant Nymph but I have a couple of others on the tbr shelves & I've ordered a few of the Vintage reprints that are to be published soon. Fleur Fisher is hosting the reading week from October 6th to 12th. You'll find a comprehensive reading list on her blog. I'm leaning towards Lucy Carmichael, which seems to be a universal favourite but there are several others that look interesting. Kennedy was one of the group of novelists who went to Somerville College, Oxford in the 1920s. Vera Brittain, Winifred Holtby & Dorothy L Sayers are the most famous names but maybe Margaret Kennedy is about to join them? It won't be for want of trying if Fleur has anything to do with it.

I'm a big fan of Delphi Classics who produce complete collections of the work of out of copyright authors as very reasonably priced ebooks. They're beautifully formatted & always include some rare gems or additional material about the author. Series Five has just been announced. These titles will be published in coming months & I'm especially excited about Margaret Oliphant & Frances Hodgson Burnett. As I said above, at least they're invisible...

Miss Mackenzie - Anthony Trollope

I've been reading a lot of new fiction lately so I was eager to read something from my favourite literary period, the 19th century. Miss Mackenzie had been mentioned a couple of years ago on a BBC radio program on neglected classics as a book that should be reprinted. It was championed by Joanna Trollope, a distant relation of the great Anthony & you can hear what she had to say about Miss Mackenzie here. This is what inspired me to buy this copy from Norilana Books. However, it's quite heavy & I have the complete works of Trollope on my e-reader so I actually read the book that way. I do like the cover of the Norilana edition though.

Margaret Mackenzie is a spinster in her mid 30s. She has spent the best years of her life caring for her parents &, more recently, her invalid brother, Walter. Margaret's two brothers, Walter & Thomas, had inherited money from another relative who hadn't thought it worthwhile to leave anything to a girl. When Walter dies, he leaves everything to Margaret & she suddenly finds herself an heiress. She's not very rich but she has enough to live on & to spread her wings a little. Thomas had used his inheritance to go into trade & is now a partner in a business selling oilcloth. The business isn't very prosperous & Thomas resents the fact that Walter left all his money to Margaret.

Margaret is immediately approached by her first suitor, Harry Handcock. She had been in love with Harry years before & they had planned to marry but Walter feared losing his nurse & Harry faded away. His reappearance now that Margaret has money doesn't recommend him to her & she refuses him. She decides to leave London & move to Littlebath (Trollope's name for Bath), taking Thomas's daughter, Susanna, with her as a companion. Margaret will send Susanna to school & plans to leave her money in her will as a way of helping Thomas's family.

Littlebath society is full of traps for the unwary & a single woman who has lived a retired life must tread carefully. Margaret becomes involved with the circle of an Evangelical preacher, Mr Stumfold, a pompous man with a terrifying wife & an admiring group of ladies to follow him wherever he goes. She becomes friends with Miss Baker &, although she would also like to be friends with Miss Todd, who lives in the same street, she discovers that this isn't possible. Miss Todd is bold & outspoken & therefore not approved of by Mr Stumfold. Mr Stumfold also has a curate, Jeremiah Maguire, a handsome man with the terrible handicap of a squint which is very offputting. Mr Maguire has ambitions that can only be realised if he marries well & he pursues Margaret.

Thomas's business partner, Samuel Rubb, arrives in Littlebath to ask Margaret if she would give the business a loan. Mr Rubb is pleasant, amusing but not a gentleman. He seems to admire Margaret but is she the attraction or is it her money? Then, Margaret is invited to stay at The Cedars, the country house of her relations the Balls. Her cousin, John Ball, is a widower with a large family & his mother plans to make a match between John & Margaret. The Balls & the Mackenzies have been estranged for many years because it was John Ball's uncle who left his money to the Mackenzie brothers rather than to the Balls. John's father, Sir John, has little money & John lives at the Cedars with his parents & his children. Lady Ball despises Margaret but is graciously willing to overlook her dislike if it means getting the Ball money back into her own family.

At this stage, I was genuinely unsure which of her suitors Margaret would favour. She is a quiet, kind, sensible woman but she's no pushover. Her brother's contempt & her sister-in-law's open dislike & resentment don't intimidate her. Her formidable aunt, Lady Ball, can't bully her into marrying John. She's no snob & doesn't see being Lady Ball as a reason to marry a man she isn't sure she can love. She pities his situation & would like to help his children but is that enough? Margaret has a hard time disentangling the motives of her suitors & working out her true feelings. Matters come to a head when her lawyers discover that the money she inherited may not belong to her at all. It may really belong to her cousin, John Ball.

Margaret had refused John's marriage proposal when he was poor & she was rich. Now that she may have no money at all, he realises that he truly loves her & proposes again. This time she accepts him as she does love him. This infuriates Lady Ball who was only prepared to tolerate the marriage if Margaret had money. Then, Mr Maguire, the curate with the squint, arrives to claim Margaret as his bride (he doesn't yet know that she may lose her money). He falsely represents their relationship to Lady Ball who is only too happy to believe him. Mr Maguire's interference threatens to ruin Margaret's happiness, & there are many anxious hours before the truth is told & Margaret can see her way clear to happiness.

Miss Mackenzie is a lovely book with an absorbing plot & wonderful characters. Trollope is always good at clergymen & Mr Stumfold & the truly awful Mr Maguire are among his best clergymen. It's also interesting & unusual, in a book published in the 1860s, to have a heroine who is in her 30s. As Joanna Trollope said in her radio piece, at 36, Margaret is so far back on the shelf as to be completely invisible. But, she's no fool & the three men who come fortune hunting will all find that she's not an easy target. Lady Ball is a tyrannical matriarch & another of Margaret's relatives, Clara Mackenzie, who comes to Margaret's rescue when her money is gone, is kind & loving. Clara is determined that Margaret's highmindedness won't prevent her from achieving the happy ending that she so desires.

I feel quite inspired to read more Trollope now that I'm back in the 19th century. Catherine Pope, on her lovely blog, Victorian Geek, has completed her own Trollope Challenge. She's read all 47 novels & come up with her lists of the ten best & ten terrible Trollopes. Miss Mackenzie doesn't make either list. Of the best, I've read Can You Forgive Her? Barchester Towers & The Way We Live Now. I fancy setting myself the challenge of reading my way through the other seven. Harry Heathcote of Gangoil has an Australian setting & I'm very tempted to start there.

I mentioned above that I have Trollope's complete works on my e-reader. I know I could have got them for free from ManyBooks or Gutenburg but I paid the princely sum of $5AU for them from Delphi Classics. It was much easier to do one download rather than 47 & they're well-formatted & it's easy to get to the book I want. The Delphi editions also often include contemporary biographies of the author as well as all the novels, short stories, poetry (Hardy), non-fiction & plays. I also have the Delphi complete editions of Edith Wharton, Thomas Hardy & Elizabeth Gaskell.