The Humour of Dickens

A little light Dickens…

My Reading Challenge has just taken a useful turn, as the members of my book club (all four of us!) have decided to read Charles Dickens this month as a contribution towards the centenary year. This means that I can read a book for my book challenge and tackle the latest book group choice at the same time. I am rather pleased about it, though unfortunately I cannot claim credit for the book club’s good idea.

I ran through a mental list of the Dickens titles that I have not yet read (the dreaded TBR Pile) and I thought of choosing Hard Times. My rationale was that Dickens based the story upon his experiences of Preston (re-naming it Coketown), and as I have lived in that very city it seemed a good reason to choose the book. Although, as I retain a great fondness for the Lancashire city, this may not prove to be wise move on my part. I have metaphorically crossed swords before now with authors who portray my favourite places in a bad light. I wouldn’t want to fall out with Dickens at his time of life.

Finally, I have settled on a compilation volume that I have had on the shelf for some time, The Humour of Dickens edited by R.J. Cruikshank. I have read this volume before, so is not strictly a TBR Pile candidate, but it is reading for sheer pleasure. It deserves a re-read especially in view of the brilliant illustrations it contains which add to the enjoyment enormously. The Humour of Dickens was published in 1952 (my copy has an inscription saying ‘Xmas 1953, from Mairi’) by the News Chronicle, London. The original price of the volume was a princely three shillings and sixpence. I did a quick out of print book search and discovered that copies of the Dickens anthology can now fetch up to around thirty pounds depending on the condition. You can also pay as little as sixty three pence plus postage, which would be more like my price. I can only hazard a guess that I probably paid a pound or so for my copy several years ago in (I think) Birmingham.

The collection has excerpts from fifteen of Dickens’ novels including Oliver Twist, Our Mutual Friend, Hard Times and The Pickwick Papers. I mentioned the illustrations above; there are twenty of these by well-known contemporary (and by now highly collectible) illustrators. One of my all time favourites is Edward Ardizzone (remember the Tim stories?) whose frontispiece drawing of ‘Dinner at the Veneerings’ endows the dinner party guests with more charm than they probably deserve. Other great cartoon artists represented in the collection regularly featured in the newspapers of the time: Arthur Horner (1916-97) of the News Chronicle, David Low (1891-1963) of the Daily Herald and Carl Giles (1916-95) of the Daily Express to name but three. All are different in style but equally vivid in their interpretation of Dickens’ characters.

I shall be in the right mindset to tackle Dickens since I am reading David Lodge’s novel about HG Wells, A Man of Parts at present. After rubbing shoulders with HG and his literary circle including Henry James and Edith Nesbit, I shall slide back into communing with Dickens quite smoothly I think. Apart from seasonal re-reading of A Christmas Carol it must be a long time since I have read any of Dickens novels. I was all prepared to take the plunge again after our book group had an outing last year to hear Claire Tomalin speaking about her Dickens biography at TCD. That plan fell by the wayside (until now), along with the intention of reading said biography. Dickens is still on my ‘to read’ list as I have previously very much enjoyed Claire Tomalin’s literary biographies.

In the meantime, Reading Challenge satisfied, I will be content with Charles Dickens’ funny bits….

All should have bonnets: a letter from Louisa M Alcott

Mar11

After the dedication of my #LetterMo writing challenge efforts have faded gently away, I have decided to return to the compendium of historic letters that I mentioned in one of my earlier entries. Having struggled to post at least one item of correspondence every day for a month, I can truly say that I stand (pen poised) in awe of the sheer effort involved in letter writing pre-Microsoft Word technology. After all, even keeping up with just a few relatives in the last century would have been a Herculean task. But thank goodness that so many people did just that, providing a mine of information and insight that would otherwise have been lost to later generations.

One of the epistles in The World’s Great Letters is one from Louisa M Alcott to her sister Anna and while it could not be claimed to hold huge historical importance, it does give you a glimpse into the life of a would-be writer who was struggling to support her family. Alcott was also mired in domestic chores as well as suffering the frustration of waiting for editors to reply to her story submissions.

Alcott’s letter, written around 1861 describes the trials and tribulations of fashioning a decent bonnet (a social necessity) with only one dollar to spend; the contents of Alcott’s ribbon box supplemented the lack of cash. She makes the whole enterprise into an entertaining anecdote for Anna Alcott, but she clearly would have loved to be able to go out and buy a smart piece of headgear. She describes her attempts to trim the one-dollar bonnet thus:

I extracted the remains of the old white ribbon (used up, as I thought, two years ago), and the bits of black lace that have adorned a long line of departed hats. Of the lace I made a dish, on which I thriftily served up bows of ribbon, like meat on toast. Inside put the lace bow, which adorns my form anywhere when needed. A white flower A.H. gave me sat airily on the brim, – fearfully unbecoming, but pretty in itself, and in keeping. Strings are yet to be evolved from chaos. I feel that they await me somewhere in the dim future.

Louisa May

All this occurred before Alcott struck gold with the phenomenally successful Little Women, which was published in 1867. At that time, she was still a ‘young woman with one dollar, no bonnet, half a gown and a discontented mind’ as she described herself. In one of those moments of literary serendipity, I spotted Louisa May (Martha Saxton, 1978) while rummaging in the Trinity Booksale on Saturday. I was meaning to re-read Little Women after seeing the sell out production last month at Dublin’s The Gate Theatre. As Little Women and its sequels reside on the landing I can justify doing just that, but I will have to make (yet another) exception for reading the Louisa May Alcott biography. But, one of the joys of reading is that you never know what is going to be around the next corner of the bookshelf!

What have you discovered this week? And how is your Reading Challenge going? Drop a line in the comment box…

When Julian met Aphra: Behn vs Barnes

Mar5

I have been reading Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending recently after a customer in the bookshop where I work told me that I really must read it. As it has been quite some time since I last read any of Barnes’ work I decided to rectify this omission, in between bouts of pursuing both my letter writing and my Reading Challenge. I suppose it makes a good contrast to zip between Aphra Behn and Julian Barnes. Potentially confusing too, exchanging one cast list for another and jumping back and forth through the centuries.

Book cover with flower head on grey background

The Interloper…

Julian Barnes’ book has to take priority (temporarily) over the Landing Reading Challenge. Sadly, it is a library loan that is so much in demand that it is un-renewable. I could of course be a bad citizen and library user and take it back late but I always worry that I might be blacklisted and not allowed to have any more books out. The quick-witted amongst you might point out that this can only be a good thing, as I would have no excuse not to read my way around the entire house let alone the landing.

This thought does indeed make me wonder whether I should forswear the library and get truly stuck in to my TBR Pile. However, if I did that then would I also have to promise not to buy any new books? I could foresee that vow being very difficult to keep up due to working daily with new books. I also have a distressing weakness for bargain sections, charity shops and remainder outlets. All of this purchasing potential makes it highly likely that my landing bookshelves reading project could take rather a long time to complete.

My train of thought has now brought me to an ethical problem (of sorts). In my meanderings around various sources of new books I will most likely come across books that should be housed on the landing after purchase i.e. classics, poetry etc. Now, this will of course mean that the original constituent parts of the landing bookshelves will most likely continue to grow over time. But do those books form part of my Reading Challenge despite not being present when the challenge began? Indeed I discovered a copy of Gwen Raverat’s Period Piece lurking in the wrong bookcase entirely (and it is a book I have not yet got around to reading) so I should re-house it on the landing. Because if I don’t, then I shouldn’t read it should I? No wonder my TBR Pile just keeps on growing.

Now, back to tackling Aphra Behn and seventeenth century English (but not until after I have finished Julian Barnes)…

UPDATE (June 2013)

I have come across a notification about the Aphra Behn Society’s Biennial Conference which will be held in October of this year. The topic will be Women, Reputation, and Identity in the Long Eighteenth Century and the conference will be held at The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK.

Aphra Behn: A Restoration Woman

Feb19

Title Page

In the last Reading Challenge blog post, I talked about reading some letters from The World’s Great Letters but I am bound to report that in the event I became slightly sidetracked by something else. I was hunting around for examples of epistolary novels for a bookseller’s blog piece for Writing.ie and came across Aphra Behn’s Love Letters between a Nobleman and his Sister. This three-part roman à clef (originally published 1684-7) was based on a sexual and political scandal of the time. The author is believed to have been the first woman to earn her living by her pen.

I was given this edition several years ago, March 1996 to be precise, but I have never got around to reading it before now. At that time, I was working in a bookshop in Birmingham and one of our customers ordered the Penguin Classics edition of the book from us. He then began to read the book and then (apparently) decided that he did not have enough time remaining in which to tackle the book and so passed it to me ‘to read at your leisure….or not, if you don’t want to’. By my reckoning, that was all of fifteen years ago and I have only just finished the introduction. Janet Todd’s scholarly introduction explains the background to the novel and gives some information on Aphra Behn’s fascinating life and career.

The details of much of Aphra Behn’s early life remain vague and any chronology available seems to be approximate as far as I can tell. It is almost certain that she was born in 1640 near Canterbury and that her parents were Bartholomew Johnson and Elizabeth Denham. She apparently married a merchant of Dutch extraction named Behn in 1664 but the marriage did not last long. Opinion has been divided on whether they divorced or Behn was widowed.

A year prior to the (probable) marriage Aphra Behn was probably in Surinam and then in 1667 she was to be found in Antwerp acting as a spy for Charles II’s government. The royal master was not good at paying his bills so Behn ended up in debtor’s prison for short while afterwards. If experience is needed to make a writer then Aphra Behn was hardly short of that valuable commodity.

Behn’s first play, in 1670 was The Forced Marriage, which ran for six nights at Lincoln’s Inn Fields performed by the ‘Duke’s Company’. I was interested to discover that the payment system was such that the income from the third night belonged to the author, so in this case Behn received two nights worth of fees. I suppose it was tough luck if your play was booed off stage in a hail of rotten tomatoes on the second night.

I was enchanted with the information that Nell Gwyn, Charles II’s ‘Little Nell’ returned to the stage to play the part of a whore named Angelica Bianca in The Rover, which was probably Behn’s most successful play. Did the two women know each other well I wonder? They were both survivors in a tough male world so they may have had much in common. A plot for a novel perhaps?

I am honestly not sure if I will ever actually get through the novel, but I will make the attempt. If I achieve the first part at least, after all this time I will be pleased with myself. But I do also have a couple of library loans looking reproachfully at me…I will see how I get on.

Meanwhile, at least I have begun to nibble away at the dreaded TBR Pile…more updates soon!