What are you reading now?

[Historian]

George Moore, Esther Waters, 1894. Influenced by French writers such as Zola, Moore wrote the history of an illiterate young woman in the 1870s who has a baby son while unmarried. Despite many disappointments she manages to look after her son and survive. Moore received much criticism at the time, partly because of its focus on behaviour and aspects of lower-class which the Lending Libraries considered 'unsuitable', but the book was a success and made his name. I found it very interesting as an early realistic study of working life, especially of servants, from a woman's point of view.

I have been trying to read more widely with the aim of discovering authors and works of which I was not aware before. Esther Waters was a major find for me. I expect there will be others here who know it better than I did.

[Historian]

Sorry to hear that you've been no weel, Padraig. Hope the mending continues. You've been missed.

Seconded (and will no doubt be followed by many others.

[johncorrigan]

That happens to be no more that a handy coincidence. I have been absent since Christmas Eve, and I'm reporting back.I thought I would start by updating my reading history - hence the lucky starting point.

Last new year I bought several books and borrowed one from the library.The borrowed one was Daniel Deronda, which I enjoyed immensely and which took me until September to finish. The others were a Michael Connolly LAPD police and courtroom drama, a Mick Herron spy thriller - new kid on the block for me - Rory Stewart's Politics on the edge and Naomi Klein's Doppelganger which I have recently started.

I plan to do something similar this New Year with my book tokens - my first pick being to buy Daniel Deronda, which I have ordered in the same edition as the borrowed copy. This time though I won't exactly be starting 'in res media' as the introduction and notes are extremely helpful. By the way, I am a big fan of George Eliot - devotee is a better word - and Daniel Deronda is a big challenge to Middlemarch. I need to read it again.

If anyone is asking I have been the victim of the worst dose ever which still enfolds me but which is, I think, slowly receding. Energy low but spirit reaching upwards. I hope you all have managed to miss this particular visitor.

Happy New Year

Sorry to hear that you've been no weel, Padraig. Hope the mending continues. You've been missed.

[Padraig]

So I can't say I'm an Eliot devotee.

That happens to be no more that a handy coincidence. I have been absent since Christmas Eve, and I'm reporting back.I thought I would start by updating my reading history - hence the lucky starting point.

Last new year I bought several books and borrowed one from the library.The borrowed one was Daniel Deronda, which I enjoyed immensely and which took me until September to finish. The others were a Michael Connolly LAPD police and courtroom drama, a Mick Herron spy thriller - new kid on the block for me - Rory Stewart's Politics on the edge and Naomi Klein's Doppelganger which I have recently started.

I plan to do something similar this New Year with my book tokens - my first pick being to buy Daniel Deronda, which I have ordered in the same edition as the borrowed copy. This time though I won't exactly be starting 'in res media' as the introduction and notes are extremely helpful. By the way, I am a big fan of George Eliot - devotee is a better word - and Daniel Deronda is a big challenge to Middlemarch. I need to read it again.

If anyone is asking I have been the victim of the worst dose ever which still enfolds me but which is, I think, slowly receding. Energy low but spirit reaching upwards. I hope you all have managed to miss this particular visitor.

Happy New Year

[smittims]

I too much enjoyed Scenes from Clerical Life. I enjoy re-reading Middlemarch but I'm afraid I have to skip chunks which I feel are redundant , such as the long account of Dr. Lydgate's earlier life. And I never much cared for Will Ladislaw : at least, not as much as I feel the author wants me to care. So I can't say I'm an Eliot devotee.

[Barbirollians]

Must read Scenes of a Clerical Life - have read all her other fiction from discovering her work in the sixth form . If anyone has not yet read Middlemarch - what a treat awaits.

[Master Jacques]

Oh dear,Sir Velo. I think Ian's taken you too seriously/literally!

I love Scott and regard him as one of the finest of all novelists. But, as with Wagner and other 19th-century masters, one has to give him time and see him in context.

Quite so. I have loved his novels for many decades, and they get better every time I reread them. I recently recommended an opera-loving Spanish colleague of mine to read the (apparently very good) translation of The Bride of Lammermoor ('La novia de Lammermoor') and his first comment was, "where has this marvellous book been all my life?"

The influence of Scott's novels and long poems was immense throughout Europe, but especially in Germany and Italy, in their time. I dare say that no British writer outside Shakespeare has had a greater influence on world literature, even Dickens. Certainly no British novelist has had so many operas based on their work. Scott operas make up a three-volume novel in themselves.

Having said which, I should have loved to have heard the opera which Tchaikovsky was planning at the time of his death, based on one of George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life. Strange but true. And if anyone cares to read Mr Gilfil's Love Story - time very well spent - I think they'll see exactly what appealed to him about the clerical hero and ill-fated musical heroine.

[smittims]

I don't think anyone today is misled by thinking Scott is , or was ever meant ot be, historically accurate. His novels feature fictional characters who find themselves caught up on the fringes of an historical event . What matters is not whether or not the events 'really took place' but the human truths expressed in the story, much as in all literature from Homer to the 20th century . We don't disparage Jane Austen because we cannot prove that Mr D'Arcy really lived, and it would be silly to disparage Shakespeare because we cannot prove that Hamlet really said 'to be or not to be'. .

But some of today's fantasu novels aboiut mediaeval women do, I think, claim to be historically accurate and are taken as such, when in fact they contain misleading anachronisms.

[Ian Thumwood]

You can go down a rabbit hole with this debate albeit very interesting.

I agree with the folklore aspect of the Green Knight but the details about such things as oiling the suit of armour really gave the impression that the author was adding elements if real life which is absent from alot of medieval fiction. I would therefore be inclined to consider this to be in a markedly more rooted in reality than, say , Mallory.

Cymberline was one of the stories that Shakespeare borrowed from Geoffrey of Monmouth. There has been a recent effort to suggest that Monmouth got his information from a long lost source and that he should be given more credit as a reliable source....it was just that he jumbled up everything which the historian Russell believes he has unpicked. I am not convinced by his argument which is hard to follow.

The interesting thing for me about Monmouth is that the Roman elements are clearly based on medieval experiences and totally lack a proper understanding of life in that era. There is the same problem with the illustrations in the 12th century Winchester bible which depicts issue from antiquity with people dressed in contemporary clothing.

I read more history than historical fiction which cwhich quite dire. Loved the Bernie Gunther series which seems like a credible refraction of the Nazis bitand there are other books like The Mulberry Empire which also capture their time. I was too repulsed by Hilary Mantel to read her books but I Mum read loads of fiction about this era which is massively popular. Where authors have got the history right, the novels are not always page turner's or alternatively have employed a chimp with a crayon to write the dialogue

[french frank]

I assume you mean fiction about history rather than fiction which is set in what is now history . Mantel’s trilogy is outstanding much more for how she humanises these long dead figures than for the accuracy of her history .

I think I agree with you, at least in part if not in whole. I meant that, whether Scott or Mantel, their work should not be judged on the basis of how accurately they depict the historical record. The setting is what the novelist chooses it to be, the past, the future, their own present, a fantasy world. What's important is what they create from their material. Fiction is made up by definition.

[Barbirollians]

Yes, I wasn't meaning to criticise him for representing the thought or society of his own time. I don't think Shakespeare intended to convey the Britain of Cunobelinus in his play Cymbeline. His genius was in the way he set about creating drama from the characters and a gripping narrative from, in this psrticular case, the (then) barely known facts of the Roman era. And as I make clear, I hope, my own lack of interest in reading historical fiction, be it Scott or Hilary Mantel, is no criticism of their literary work.

I assume you mean fiction about history rather than fiction which is set in what is now history . Mantel’s trilogy is outstanding much more for how she humanises these long dead figures than for the accuracy of her history .

[Barbirollians]

I read Ivanoe many years ago and was unenthusiastic. It is very much medieval history told through a Victorian lens. Having read alot of medieval at that time, Scott's shortcomings are all too obvious. Never tempted by anything else my him

I enjoyed Ivanhoe but am finding Waverley rather more hard work.

[french frank]

To be fair to him., Scott was pre-Victorian, already a famous novelist at the time of George IV's famous visit .

Yes, I wasn't meaning to criticise him for representing the thought or society of his own time. I don't think Shakespeare intended to convey the Britain of Cunobelinus in his play Cymbeline. His genius was in the way he set about creating drama from the characters and a gripping narrative from, in this psrticular case, the (then) barely known facts of the Roman era. And as I make clear, I hope, my own lack of interest in reading historical fiction, be it Scott or Hilary Mantel, is no criticism of their literary work.

[smittims]

To be fair to him., Scott was pre-Victorian, already a famous novelist at the time of George IV's famous visit . His agenda was to show that the Union worked , as it did after his death,when Scotland became unprecedently prosperous as a result of English investment, and to bury the hatchet over ancient wrongs. He virtually created the Scots tourist industry as well. Quite a sucessful writer , I think. And by the way, his characters are well worth reading about too,,and his novels continue to satisfy and delight serious readers. I regularly re-read him with pleasure . .

[french frank]

I've never read any of Scott's novels, and wouldn't because the idea of 'historical fiction' doesn't appeal. I'd prefer to read history. Nor does science fiction or fantasy fiction appeal. I read few novels these days and they would tend to be classic writers and, selectively, modern novels thought of as 'literary fiction'.

But I would see the fact of Scott reflecting Victorian thinking as being in itself interesting. Sir Gawain says more about medieval folklore - an imaginative reflection of the Middle Ages rather than presenting any form of reality.