(grey pony)

Doro!

Reb — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 01:21:38 +0000

Doro is my nickname for Dorothy Wordsworth, whom I’m really fond of. Not only was she waaaay cooler than her dull brother, yep, that Wordsworth, she wrote a travel memoir that is so perfectly in the Picturesque style that it puts Gilpin to shame. Not that he shouldn’t be ashamed anyway, so atrocious is his prose.

I’m always book hunting and recently found this suuuuper cute Oxford University Press 1958 edition of some of her journals. It includes the Grasmere Journals that I’ve mentioned before.

It’s pocket! And mint green! And a super cute picture on the front! It has “Purchased at Wordsworth’s Cottage Grasmere” stamped on the flyleaf. Sweeeet!

I’ll do a little write up about it when I’ve finished reading. Right now I have to get back to Doro’s slanting woods of an unvarying brown and the half dead sound of the near sheep-bell. O Doro!

Georgian: great era for nicknames

Reb — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 23:57:00 +0000

Athenian Stuart…Single Speech Hamilton…Capability Brown

March’s Literary Review goes in for a little of one of my favorite topics - Capability Brown. In her atrociously titled piece, “The Earth Moved for Him”, Amanda Foreman reviews Jane Brown’s biography of the über influential master landscape gardener, The Omnipotent Magician: Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown 1716-1783, likewise absurdly titled.

But I’m indebted to Foreman’s otherwise cracking piece for putting me on the track of art historian Dorothy Stroud’s 1950 biography, a work I hadn’t heard of and will now endeavor to find.

Ooh pretty!

Reb — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 17:14:51 +0000

It’s entirely possible that I have an addiction problem when it comes to books. Not only is my apartment full of them but I also have a storage unit full of them, my old bedroom in my mum’s house is full of them and I cannot spend less than an hour in my favorite second hand bookshop, nor can I come away empty handed.

Even though I would not want to pass this affliction onto others, I cannot help but enthuse about particular editions when they pique my interest. One of my favorite publishers, Dover, is well known for publishing important material in affordable editions but they often do special editions too, and I love this relaunch of a classic edition of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. This new volume is a reissue of the 1894 edition of London publisher George Allen, with the perhaps not entirely true to era but lovely original illustrations of Victorian artist Chris Hammond.

Sense and Sensibility featuring 1899 illustrations by Chris Hammond

Sense and Sensibility 2010 Dover Publications, featuring the 1899 illustrations of Chris Hammond

Jane Austen educatin’ the kids

Reb — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:19:28 +0000

As some of you may know, one of my majors at university is Medieval Studies, and yesterday Jane Austen popped up on campus in the most unlikely of places – my Europe in the Middle Ages history class. Yesterday’s lecture dealt primarily with a comparison between English Common Law and the Laws of Cuenca, one of the pertinent points being that facets of English primogeniture, such as the entail, were already in use in the 12th century.

And on this point our professor commented, “And anybody who’s seen Pride and Prejudice knows what an entail is. All those daughters left without estate or income because the property is legally entailed away from the squire’s natural children in favor of a male heir.” And a murmur of understanding rippled throughout the lecture hall. Nice one, Austen.

The 18th Century Buoys up in 2010

Reb — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 06:24:47 +0000

Once again, 18th century and Regency novels do well on Valancourt Books‘ Top 10 Sellers for the past year:

#3 Six Gothic Dramas by Joanna Baillie

#4 The Witch of Ravensworth by George Brewer 1808

#5 The Necromancer; or, The Tale of the Black Forest by "Lawrence Flammenberg" (pseud. of Karl Friedrich Kahlert) 1794

#8 The Castle of Wolfenbach by Eliza Parsons 1793

#9 The Old English Baron: A Gothic Story by Clara Reeve 1777 with Edmond, Orphan of the Castle John Broster

The Cenci by Percy Bysshe Shelley 1819

I’m so thrilled that of all the excellent editions offered by Valancourt Books, 18th century titles are doing so well, including the two titles from the Northanger Canon; The Castle of Wolfenbach and The Necromancer.

graphic pride

Reb — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 07:57:44 +0000

Just had to share another awesome graphic novel from Self Made Hero. This time Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice has gotten the Hero treatment. Fab.

essayist

Reb — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 06:15:39 +0000

For the first time in my life I’ve won a prize. Okay, I won an Easter raffle in elementary school. But this one’s actually based on merit. I am the winner of the 2009/2010 essay contest held by the literature department at my university. Sweet action.

graphic shandy

Reb — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 22:05:48 +0000

Ever since coming across Graphics Classics‘ Gothic Classics edition featuring graphic novel adaptations of Northanger Abbey, The Mysteries of Udolpho and Carmilla, I’ve been a big fan of the Graphics Classics collection, and own several editions. Today I came across another publisher specializing in graphic novel adaptations, Self Made Hero. Self Made Hero’s publications are very different from those of Graphics Classics and both publishers provide something unique. Self Made Hero’s editions are scrappier, edgier but with less focus on classic or obscure literature. Self Made Hero’s comic book stylings will make them more appealing to some, while Graphics Classics illustration-heritage graphics will be preferred by others. I’m keen to order several editions from SMH from their Eye Classics, Crime Classics and Graphic Biography collections, including of course an adaptation of Laurence Sterne’s 1759 The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.

the old scottish gothic

Reb — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:43:59 +0000

More Georgian Gothic from Valancourt Books!

This is really one of those books I would buy based only on the title: The Caledonian Bandit: or, The Heir of Duncaethal, A Romance of the Thirteenth Century by Catherine “Mrs” Smith. How good does that sound? I, like Jane Austen, enjoy the Gothic pulp fiction of the Regency. First published in 1811, it is reproduced here in it’s original, unabridged two volume edition. According to Valancourt Books, only two known copies of the original text survive. Valancourt’s edition includes an intriguing introductory essay focusing on Scottish Gothic fiction.

Related Topics on (grey pony) Gothic Fiction, The Northanger Canon

1800-1803: The Grasmere Journals

Reb — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:34:02 +0000

The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, published in 2008, appears to be another work of excellence from my favorite modern literary biographer, Frances Wilson, whose riveting biography of courtesan, author and master blackmailer Harriette Wilson (no relation) I have mentioned on this site before. Dorothy (1771-1855) was an author, diarist and aide to her brother, poet William Wordsworth.

I haven’t read it yet but based on Margaret Drabble’s review in the Times Literary Supplement (April 23, 2008) I intend to as soon as possible. I strongly recommend reading Margaret Drabble’s review, not only for her insights into Wilson’s work but also because Drabble’s expansion on Wilson’s idea of a connection between Dorothy and Emily Brontë is quite fascinating.

“Wilson confines her analysis largely to the period leading up to the writing of the Grasmere Journals (1800–03) and to the journals themselves, and she brings her story to an end with an emotional climax and a textual crux.”

“She describes the immense walks that Dorothy took, “with mud-encrusted skirts banging against her sturdy legs, her flimsy shoes, her neck and face often wet and cold, her eyes and ears alert to the beauty of every sight” and the disapproving reactions of family and landladies to this bohemian mode of travel. She invokes Miss Bingley’s scorn of Elizabeth Bennet’s three-mile walk to see her sick sister at Netherfield…”

“The Wordsworth walks were more Brontë than Austen, and Wilson uses Emily Brontë as a key to her understanding of brother and sister…”

Quoted from “Poor Dorothy Wordsworth, The Shadow Story of the Wordsworths and Wuthering Heights” by Margaret Drabble from The Times Literary Supplement 23 April, 2008

Dorothy Wordsworth’s Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland in A.D. 1803 was not published until many years after her death and is now considered a masterpiece of Picturesque travel writing. The text is available to read online or download over at Internet Archive