Hesperus Press - Uncover a Classic - winner announced!

You might remember earlier this year that Hesperus Press ran a competition to find a lost classic to add to their very distinguished list to celebrate their 10th anniversary. The winning book has been announced & it's The Great Meadow by Elizabeth Madox Roberts. Roberts isn't an author I've heard of but she was very well regarded in the first half of the 20th century.  The Great Meadow was published in 1930 & was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize.

Roberts was born in 1881 & her work has been compared to that of Willa Cather, William Faulkner & Robert Penn Warren. She enrolled at the University of Chicago in her 30s to pursue her love of literature & her best-known work tells the stories of the Kentucky mountain people. The Great Meadow is a historical novel set in the early days of the settlement of Kentucky. It's the story of a young couple leaving their families in Virginia to make the long journey to settle in Kentucky.

Michael Wynne, who entered The Great Meadow in the competition, has written an Introduction that will be included in this new edition.

I'm looking forward to reading The Great Meadow & I hope to have a chance to do so before it's published at the end of October.

Hesperus Press - choose their next classic

Hesperus Press is one of my favourite small publishers. They've created a niche in a very crowded classics market by reprinting shorter, often barely known, works by famous authors including Jane Austen, Christina Rossetti, Charlotte Brontё & Wilkie Collins. I've been particularly impressed by their reprints of the Christmas stories written by Charles Dickens & other Victorian novelists & published in his magazine, Household Words.

Hesperus have asked me to mention their new competition to celebrate their 10th anniversary. They would like readers to nominate an out of print classic that they would like to see back on the bookshop shelves. You need to write 500 words on why you think this book should be back in print &, if you win, your Introduction will be included when the book is published in September.

The closing date is June 1st so there's not much time to contemplate that long list of books that you think should be made available to all discerning readers. Although Hesperus books are generally about 100pp long, there's no restriction on the length of the book although it must be in English (or available in translation) & must be out of print. All the details & conditions are available at the Hesperus Press website, just click the link above.

The Highland Widow - Sir Walter Scott

After reading the essay on Sir Walter Scott in The Best of Books & Co, I was inspired to have a look at what I had of Sir Walter's on the tbr shelves. My 19th century bookgroup is about to start reading Scott's The Talisman next week, so I didn't want a full-length novel. I did find this novella from Hesperus Press & another volume of three short stories which was just about right.


The Highland Widow is from the collection of three tales, Chronicles of the Canongate. The tales are framed by a story about a man called Chrystal Croftangry who wants to show the past of Scotland through a series of tales told to him by his friends. The Highland Widow is told to him by Mrs Bethune Baliol, who is travelling through the Highlands & comes across a woman sitting silent & motionless in front of her croft.

She guessed, perhaps, that it was curiosity, arising out of her uncommon story, which induced me to intrude on her solitude... Yet the look with which she regarded me was one of scorn rather than embarrassment. The opinion of the world and all its children could not add or take an iota from her load of misery, and, save from the half-smile that seemed to intimate the contempt of a being rapt by the very intensity of her affliction above the sphere of ordinary humanities, she seemed as indifferent to my gaze, as if she had been a dead corpse or a marble statue.

When she enquires about her, she is told the story of her life. Elspat MacTavish is feared & shunned by her neighbours. Known as the Woman of the Tree, she has lived alone for many years. Elspat was married to MacTavish Mhor, a scoundrel & cattle thief who ran a protection racket in the area. The MacTavishs & their son, Hamish, lived well on the proceeds of crime. Elspet was beautiful, happy & rich. MacTavish Mhor came out for Prince Charlie in the 1745 rebellion & was outlawed. He was killed fighting desperately against a detachment of redcoats sent to capture him, Elspat at his side, loading his gun.

After MacTavish Mhor's death, Elspat focuses on her son, Hamish, expecting that he will take up his father's mantle. She has cut herself off from her neighbours & is unaware of the changes in Scotland since the failure of the Jacobite rebellion. Hamish grows up to realise that his father's trade was dishonourable & although he loves his mother, he decides that he needs to follow his own path. As he becomes more independent, his mother's jealous love becomes more obsessive. When Hamish joins a Highland regiment of the British army, Elspat's disgust knows no bounds. She sees this as a betrayal of her, his father & all the Highland traditions that had been destroyed by the English. Hamish sees it as a way to make a living & provide for his mother. Hamish accepts that the clans have been finally defeated & must bow to the inevitable but Elspat never will,

'Dearest mother,' answered Hamish, 'how shall I convince you that you live in this land of our fathers, as if our fathers were yet living? You walk as it were in a dream, surrounded by the phantoms of those who have been long with the dead.... The land is conquered - its lights are quenched - Glengary, Lochiel, Perth, Lord Lewis, all the high chiefs are dead or in exile. We may mourn for it but we cannot help it. Bonnet, broadsword, and sporran - power, strength and wealth, were all lost on Drummossie Muir.'
'It is false!' said Elspat fiercely, 'you, and such like dastardly spirits, are quelled by your own faint hearts, not by the strength of the enemy. You are like the fearful waterfowl, to whom the least cloud in the sky seems the shadow of the eagle.' 

Elspat then makes a fateful decision. She decides to prevent Hamish returning to his regiment after his leave. He will be condemned as a deserter & flogged & she thinks that, rather than submit to such humiliation, Hamish will consent to her plan of hiding him in the Highlands as happened in the old days. Elspat's plan destroys her & she lives out the rest of her days alone, shunned & feared by her neighbours.

The Highland Widow is about the fury of a woman who can't embrace change, whose love for her son destroys them both. Elspat is almost an elemental creature. She seems to subsist on very little, she lives on her rage & desire for revenge & on her terrible nostalgia for the old days. Elspat is like a fierce witch or soothsayer, prophesying doom & cursing those who don't see things as she does. She never softens or asks for help, even at her lowest point.

I also read a few short stories by Scott. The most interesting was My Aunt Margaret's Mirror, a Gothic tale originally written for The Keepsake annual in 1828. Aunt Margaret tells the narrator a story about her ancestor & namesake who died 200 years before. This Margaret had a sister, Jemmie, a delicate beauty but not a clever girl. Jemmie married a young rake, Sir Philip Forester, who soon tired of her & neglected her. He spent little time at home &, eventually decided to go to the Continent where he hoped to join the Army & have an adventure or two. He left Jemmie fretting at home &, when he had been gone some time, Jemmie decided to consult a mysterious doctor from Padua, Baptisti Damiotti, who had a reputation among the society ladies of Edinburgh of being able to see into the future. Margaret is determined to go with her sister &, although they disguise themselves, the Doctor sees through this immediately. The Doctor, by some supernatural means, shows the ladies a scene in a huge mirror that he says is happening many miles away at that very moment. The shock destroys what's left of Jemmie's intelligence & she never recovers.

My Aunt Margaret's Mirror is a suitable spooky tale for an Annual. Annuals were usually published around Christmas time & were full of ghost stories, holiday tales & poetry. The story was apparently based on one told to Scott by his own great-aunt, Margaret Swinton & her stories formed part of the inspiration for his novel, The Bride of Lammermoor.

Christmas - Fact & Fiction

I’ve been reading about Christmas this week. Both the historic origins of Christmas & fiction published at Christmas time, usually with a Christmas theme. Over the past few years, Hesperus Press has reprinted several of the Christmas special editions of Charles Dickens’s Household Words magazine. These special editions, although “conducted” by Dickens, have contributions of stories or poems by other authors. The Seven Poor Travellers & The Holly-Tree Inn were first published in the 1850s & brought together by a theme, a surrounding story written by Dickens.

In The Seven Poor Travellers, the framing story is of a traveller who visits an almshouse at Christmas time & provides a lavish Christmas dinner for the seven poor travellers who are entitled to a meal & a night’s accommodation. In return, he asks each of the travellers to tell him a story. In The Holly-Tree Inn, a young man planning to emigrate after an unhappy love affair is snowed in at an inn & after reading everything he can find, relieves his loneliness by asking the staff at the inn to tell him a story. The quality is variable. Wilkie Collins’s contributions in both volumes are the best. I may be biased because Wilkie is one of my favourite authors & I’ve read a lot of his work this year but I enjoyed his stories very much. In The Holly-Tree Inn he tells The Ostler’s Story. This was subsequently reprinted as The Dream Woman & is a frightening tale of a man who dreams of his own murder by a woman who he subsequently marries. In The Seven Poor Travellers, Collins is the Fourth Poor Traveller & tells an exciting story about a wedding almost derailed by blackmail & a clever lawyer who foils the plot. I’d read both these stories in other anthologies but I enjoyed reading them again.

Dickens’s own contributions consist mainly of the framing stories but he also wrote The Boots’s Story in The Holly-Tree Inn & I’m afraid this is a dreadfully twee & sentimental story of two children who decide to elope. There are also stories very much of their time that read very uncomfortably today. George Sala’s story in The Seven Poor Travellers is a disturbing story full of anti-Semitic stereotypes. Adelaide Anne Proctor’s poetry is conventional narrative verse with moral pointed out at the end.

One of the most interesting stories for me was William Howitt’s Landlord’s Story in The Holly-Tree Inn. Howitt was a well-travelled man who spent some time in Australia & it immediately struck me when reading his story that he had been here in Melbourne. I know it’s changed a little in the last 160 years but I recognized his Melbourne. He tells the story of a family who emigrate to Melbourne in search of the wealth they’ve heard about from their friends. When they arrive, they discover the colony in an economic depression & the future looks grim. But, this is a story for Christmas & tragedy wouldn’t be appropriate. Mr Tattenhall buys up property with the little bit of capital he has brought with him &, eventually, after some lean years, he starts to recover & build up his wealth. This is the passage that had me smiling in recognition,

Bob had got a station out at the Dundenong-Hills, and told wonderful stories of riding after kangaroos, and wild bulls, and shooting splendid lyre-birds ... And really my brother’s villa on the Yarra River is a very fine place.   It stands on a high bank above the valley, in which the Yarra winds, taking a sweep there, its course marked by a dense body of acacia trees. In the spring these trees are of resplendent gold, loading the air with their perfume. Now they were thick and dark in their foliage, casting their shade on the river deep between its banks.

I can see the Dundenong-Hills from my house but now they’re called the Dandenong Ranges. I shuddered at the thought of shooting lyrebirds but I could smell the acacia blossom that we call the wattle. Not sure about villas on the banks of the Yarra but there are still plenty of 19th century mansions there. Howitt also wrote Land, Labour and Gold, about his time in Victoria, a book in every library’s Local History collection. It was lovely to come across this story. Both these books are lovely seasonal gems to dip into or read straight through. I think it’s a clever idea of Hesperus to reprint them.

I’ve also been listening to Miriam Margolyes read A Christmas Carol every day on the way to work. My favourite Christmas story. I read it every year & know passages of it by heart. My favourite part is the beginning. Marley’s Ghost. I can see & hear the ghost trailing its chains and cashboxes as it comes up the stairs to Scrooge’s fireside. The description of the ghost with the pigtail & the grave cloth around its head telling Scrooge, “I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.” sends a shiver through me every time.

I’ve also read The Making of the Modern Christmas by J M Golby & A W Purdue. This beautifully illustrated book is about the history of Christmas from the earliest times to the present. The authors discuss the pagan origins of the Christmas tree, the holly & the mistletoe & how the old festivals of Misrule & Yule were changed into Christmas. How the Christian Church gradually took over pagan festivals as its influence grew & how some of the traditions we associate with Christmas are of much more recent origin than we think. Most of the customs we think of as traditional were started in the 18th or 19th centuries. They were popularised by Dickens’s A Christmas Carol & the Christmas chapters of The Pickwick Papers & Washington Irving’s story, Old Christmas. There are chapters on the differences between the American & English Christmas & how Christmas was celebrated during the World Wars. A really interesting look at the historical origins of Christmas.


After all this 19th century tradition, tomorrow I plan to reveal the technological leap I've taken into the 21st century. Stay tuned for further details!

Commonplace - Christina Rossetti

Christina Rossetti is one of my favourite poets. She was a member of a talented family. Her brother, Dante Gabriel, was a founding member of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of young Victorian artists who wanted to revolutionise the staid world of the Royal Academy. Christina was a model for Gabriel in several paintings but I prefer the beautiful chalk drawings he did of her like the one above.

Her most famous poem, Goblin Market, is an extraordinary poem about sisterhood, love & temptation. She also wrote very movingly of love & loss, especially in the Monna Innominata sonnets. Christina also wrote children’s stories & fables with a religious theme as well as a few other pieces of short fiction. Commonplace is one of these, & Hesperus Press has reprinted it in a beautiful edition with yet another of their stunning cover designs. Commonplace is the story of the three Charlmont sisters, Catherine, Lucy & Jane. They’ve lived in Brompton-on-Sea all their lives. Their father went missing in a boating accident when Catherine was 12 & Jane not yet born. Their mother died in childbirth after making Catherine promise that one of the girls would always be at home to welcome back their father when he returns. Of course, he never does return & by the time Jane is 18, the three sisters are entrenched in their comfortable, middle-class existence in Brompton-on-Sea.

Catherine, in her early 30s, has been a mother to Jane & Lucy & feels the responsibility of her position. Lucy is a gentle soul who has loved & lost & is almost resigned to spinsterhood. Jane is dependant financially on her sisters (her father made no provision for her in his will because he didn’t know his wife was pregnant when he died), spoilt, wilful & determined to marry comfortably to escape her dependency. She hasn’t a romantic or sensitive bone in her body. In these three women, Christina Rossetti explores the options for middle-class women in Victorian England. There are some very funny scenes, especially when Jane decides to marry a pompous name-dropper, much older than herself. This man, Mr Durham, has a daughter, Stella, who has married Alan Hartley, the object of Lucy’s unrequited love. Lucy surprises herself by becoming very fond of Stella & finally seeing through Alan’s shallow charms. All is not lost for her though as an old suitor reappears on the scene.

Rossetti packs a lot into just 60pp. Many other Victorian writers would have found enough plot here for a three volume novel. Commonplace is a slight story, a bit of a curiosity from an author better known for her poetry, but I found it an interesting exploration of the constraints on middle-class women of the time.

Hesperus Press

What a great idea. Jane Austen is the world’s most popular author. Instead of publishing another edition of Pride & Prejudice or Persuasion, why not reprint Lesley Castle or Lady Susan? Someone new to Dickens may be daunted by the size of David Copperfield or Bleak House. Why not dip your toe in the water with one of his volumes of Christmas short stories such as The Holly Tree Inn? This is what Hesperus Press has done & I think it’s a brilliant idea. They’ve taken on the classics market at an oblique angle & found a niche that they’ve made their own. I love classic fiction. I’ve read all of Austen, the Brontes, Gaskell, most of Dickens & Hardy, lots of the Russians & now I’m discovering Zola & Balzac. Hesperus are broadening my reading even more with their reprints of lesser-known works by well-known authors. I’ve especially enjoyed the series of Dickens’ Christmas editions from his periodicals, All The Year Round & Household Words. These were special holiday editions consisting of a series of stories linked by a theme. Dickens orchestrated it & often wrote several of the stories. But, he invited other authors, including Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, Amelia Edwards & Harriet Martineau to contribute as well. I don’t think they had been reprinted until the Hesperus editions. This is what’s so innovative about the Hesperus list. You have recognition of the author &, for the classics lover, the delight of finding a new book. Another favourite is Wilkie Collins’s The Frozen Deep. This is the story that became the basis of the play Dickens was acting in when he met & fell in love with Ellen Ternan. Although I knew the basic plot from reading biographies of Dickens, I’d never read the play or this original story. Hesperus Press books are also beautiful. They’re all around 100pp long, the cover photos are gorgeous, the paper is creamy & I love the French flaps (I think that’s what they’re called) that make the book a little sturdier than a paperback but not as heavy as a hardback. Perfect handbag size. I never leave home without a book, so size is important when choosing my lunchtime coffee reading. You can see a few of my Hesperus titles above. I have a couple more on preorder (Scott’s Highland Widow & Jenny Wren’s Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl) & a whole lot more in my Book Depository wishlist. Balzac’s Colonel Chabert (remember the movie with Gerard Depardieu?), De La Mare’s Missing, Bacon’s Henry VII, Braddon’s Lawyer’s Secret, Zola’s For a Night of Love... If I wasn’t highly disciplined, I’d be ordering this lot right now. But, I still have a few Hesperus books on the tbr shelves so I’ll start with those & look forward to ordering some more soon. I wish I could include a link to their website but the Hesperus Press website has been under construction for a very long time & shows no signs of appearing & their blog hasn't been updated since August.