Recent reading
Mar. 8th, 2025 09:04 amRe-read Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (1853). Lovely, of course! Partway through, though, I was starting to find the charmingly humorous foibles of it all a bit much; but the edition I read contained an afterword which argued that beneath the charming surface of this book is a vicious criticism of the sensibilities, priorities and morals of the industrial urban world which the town of Cranford is set against, and on reflection I like the book better for seeing it that way. It's also a fascinating and highly valuable source of little historical details. I especially enjoyed the bits of Jenkyns family history which look back to the late eighteenth century—seeing one historical period as then-recent history from the perspective of a slightly later but now still firmly historical period is always fascinating. Also the bit about how great and enjoyable a writer Charles Dickens [who was Gaskell's friend] is, and how the narrative amusedly indulges Miss Jenkyns's stubborn foible of preferring Dr Johnson to him.
Ben o' Bill's, the Luddite: A Yorkshire Tale by D. F. E. Sykes and George Henry Walker (1898).![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skygiants mentioned this historical novel in a recent review of a disappointing non-fiction book about the Luddites, and I was immediately attracted by the title. It is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: the story of the machine-breaking movement in the neighbourhood of Huddersfield during the economic depression caused by the Napoleonic Wars' effects on trade, as experienced by a rather naively decent (and irritatingly heterosexual) young protagonist who sympathises with the privations of poor weavers whose jobs are threatened by new machines but is appropriately horrified by the violence the Luddites resort to. (The attitudes in this Luddite novel would make an interesting compare-and-constrast with those in some Jacobite novels, possibly.) Ben's cousin George, who actually gets to murder an evil mill owner Colin Campbell-style, is much more interesting, as is John Booth, the possibly-implicitly-queer clergyman's son who is too good to survive the pivotal attack on the mill but who gets some amazing last words in the process. The West Yorkshire dialect, in which much of the dialogue is written, was also enjoyable—I was especially struck by the apparent flexibility of second person pronouns (characters often switch between you-ing and tha-ing the same people, sometimes even within a sentence).
At this point I was cruelly struck down by a dreadful lurgy, and spent three days in bed/on the sofa reading Angela Brazil novels:
A Pair of Schoolgirls, A Popular Schoolgirl and Loyal to the School by Angela Brazil (1912, 1920 and 1921 respectively). Possibly an unrepresentative sample of Brazil's work, as none of these are actually boarding school stories—two are set at day schools and one's heroine is a weekly boarder at a school where most of the pupils are day-girls. The confined, clearly-bounded setting is something I like about boarding school books, and it was a bit disappointing not to get that here—all three books have a lot about the heroines' home lives and other affairs beyond the school, often including an amount of background male characters and heterosexuality. Similarly, there is certainly an amount of the sentimental friendship Brazil has a reputation for, direct comparisons of schoolgirl friends to courting couples included—Loyal to the School, whose heroine is named Lesbia and inspires a jealousy between at one point three other girls who have crushes on her, is especially good for this—but none of the books really seemed interested in committing to a story about these relationships, all being much more focussed on the heroines' individual development. Brazil is very good at writing realistic teenage character flaws—thoughtless selfishness, oversensitivity to imaginary slights, readiness to be very dramatic—and amazing at naming characters (besides Lesbia, A Popular Schoolgirl features the Saxon siblings, Athelstane, Edgar, Quenrede, Ingred and Hereward).
I am now more or less recovered and have plunged into Wilkie Collins's No Name, which so far is amazing and highly, highly recommended to Armadale fans.
Ben o' Bill's, the Luddite: A Yorkshire Tale by D. F. E. Sykes and George Henry Walker (1898).
skygiants mentioned this historical novel in a recent review of a disappointing non-fiction book about the Luddites, and I was immediately attracted by the title. It is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: the story of the machine-breaking movement in the neighbourhood of Huddersfield during the economic depression caused by the Napoleonic Wars' effects on trade, as experienced by a rather naively decent (and irritatingly heterosexual) young protagonist who sympathises with the privations of poor weavers whose jobs are threatened by new machines but is appropriately horrified by the violence the Luddites resort to. (The attitudes in this Luddite novel would make an interesting compare-and-constrast with those in some Jacobite novels, possibly.) Ben's cousin George, who actually gets to murder an evil mill owner Colin Campbell-style, is much more interesting, as is John Booth, the possibly-implicitly-queer clergyman's son who is too good to survive the pivotal attack on the mill but who gets some amazing last words in the process. The West Yorkshire dialect, in which much of the dialogue is written, was also enjoyable—I was especially struck by the apparent flexibility of second person pronouns (characters often switch between you-ing and tha-ing the same people, sometimes even within a sentence).At this point I was cruelly struck down by a dreadful lurgy, and spent three days in bed/on the sofa reading Angela Brazil novels:
A Pair of Schoolgirls, A Popular Schoolgirl and Loyal to the School by Angela Brazil (1912, 1920 and 1921 respectively). Possibly an unrepresentative sample of Brazil's work, as none of these are actually boarding school stories—two are set at day schools and one's heroine is a weekly boarder at a school where most of the pupils are day-girls. The confined, clearly-bounded setting is something I like about boarding school books, and it was a bit disappointing not to get that here—all three books have a lot about the heroines' home lives and other affairs beyond the school, often including an amount of background male characters and heterosexuality. Similarly, there is certainly an amount of the sentimental friendship Brazil has a reputation for, direct comparisons of schoolgirl friends to courting couples included—Loyal to the School, whose heroine is named Lesbia and inspires a jealousy between at one point three other girls who have crushes on her, is especially good for this—but none of the books really seemed interested in committing to a story about these relationships, all being much more focussed on the heroines' individual development. Brazil is very good at writing realistic teenage character flaws—thoughtless selfishness, oversensitivity to imaginary slights, readiness to be very dramatic—and amazing at naming characters (besides Lesbia, A Popular Schoolgirl features the Saxon siblings, Athelstane, Edgar, Quenrede, Ingred and Hereward).
I am now more or less recovered and have plunged into Wilkie Collins's No Name, which so far is amazing and highly, highly recommended to Armadale fans.
