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Starting the final lap
All of the material I have for my second year at Leeds has now been covered in previous posts. There was a course on the History of Criticism, about which I remember little, except that we complained because we couldn’t hear the lecturer – no microphones in those days. So we move on now to…
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Fifty Classics 3: A Friend From England
My previous post in this 50 Classics thread was about my first encounter with Iris Murdoch. This one is another first encounter, again with a Booker Prize winning woman author, of roughly the same vintage: Anita Brookner. The Booker was awarded for her best-known novel, Hotel du Lac, whereas A Friend From England did not…
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The Intercontinental Book Group
The Intercontinental Book Group. It sounds like the title of one of those whimsical novels, doesn’t it? The ones that often feature cats, coffee shops and libraries. Or those cosy feel-good stories, like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society or The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris. In fact, it’s the rather facetious name I…
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Fifty Classics 1: The House of Mirth
My knowledge of American literature is abysmal, especially if you exclude honorary Englishmen T.S. Eliot and Henry James. So I was happy to broaden my horizons by reading Edith Wharton’s 1906 novel, The House of Mirth. I was aware of Edith Wharton as a name, of course, and as a friend of Henry James, but…
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Touring through the eighteenth century
Back in the second year at Leeds, we had some choices about which courses we followed on our scheme. I’m not sure if Special Period was a compulsory or an elective, but it’s one I enjoyed immensely. The course was, I think, the only one we did that was defined not by genre or author…
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Fifty Classics
Unaccountably, it’s 2026, and what’s more, it’s February already. This means my plan to track my degree experience fifty years later has gone awry somewhat, as I haven’t finished 1974-75. But I will press on with that, and move on to 75-76 in forthcoming posts. Before that, however, I need to share an announcement about…
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Novel Discoveries
Our novel course in 1974-5 took us from the early seventeenth century to the early nineteenth. Six substantial texts were prescribed, and a good many others recommended. Here’s our reading list from that year. I think I read most of the novels listed here. All of the key texts, of course, and quite a few…
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Review: Emmeline
Emmeline, by Charlotte Smith (Walmer Classics, 978-0-6457519-0-1 paperback) A novel with the title Emmeline: The Orphan of the Castle, published in 1787, immediately suggests that the narrative will deal with a spirited and noble heroine, whose virtue will be threatened by a villainous admirer. The heroine will have a champion who will rescue her from…
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Now, where were we?
Blimey, it’s 2023! Last time I looked, it was 2017! I remember as a boy trying to work out how old I would be when the millennium came to its close. It seemed impossibly far distant, and my age in the year 2000 impossibly old. And yet, here we are.I’m currently revamping this site, and…