30 day book meme: Day 8
May. 28th, 2019 07:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeDay 8. Have more than one copy.
I have two copies of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. One is an old, slightly battered Oxford World's Classics paperback (I can tell it's old, firstly because the price on the back from when it was first sold is £2.75, and secondly because I have examples of two distinct more recent Oxford World's Classics standard designs on my shelves). The other is a very nice ornate hardback, with illustrations and a little booklet with information about the author's life inside.
This was, I think, the first Proper Grown-up Classic I read, at the age of about thirteen, so I should really credit it for getting me into Victorian literature. My opinions of it are mixed: I think Charlotte Brontë is a very good writer who had a lot of excellent ideas and said some very important things in some very thoughtful and insightful ways, but ultimately her id is not my id, and from that perspective some of the directions her characters go in look decidedly unwise and far from ideal. This book reflects both of those things. (My favourite of her books is Shirley, which reflects both of them even more strongly—a more frustrating book I have never read).
That first foray into the Victorian world was with the old paperback, of course, which migrated from my parents' shelves to my own soon afterwards. It must have been a short while after that that my family noticed my new interest and started giving me fancy editions of Victorian books for birthdays and Christmases, which is where the fancy hardback came from!
I have two copies of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. One is an old, slightly battered Oxford World's Classics paperback (I can tell it's old, firstly because the price on the back from when it was first sold is £2.75, and secondly because I have examples of two distinct more recent Oxford World's Classics standard designs on my shelves). The other is a very nice ornate hardback, with illustrations and a little booklet with information about the author's life inside.
This was, I think, the first Proper Grown-up Classic I read, at the age of about thirteen, so I should really credit it for getting me into Victorian literature. My opinions of it are mixed: I think Charlotte Brontë is a very good writer who had a lot of excellent ideas and said some very important things in some very thoughtful and insightful ways, but ultimately her id is not my id, and from that perspective some of the directions her characters go in look decidedly unwise and far from ideal. This book reflects both of those things. (My favourite of her books is Shirley, which reflects both of them even more strongly—a more frustrating book I have never read).
That first foray into the Victorian world was with the old paperback, of course, which migrated from my parents' shelves to my own soon afterwards. It must have been a short while after that that my family noticed my new interest and started giving me fancy editions of Victorian books for birthdays and Christmases, which is where the fancy hardback came from!
