Recent reading
Mar. 24th, 2021 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeSome more Barbara Pym, and two very different books about late Victorian London.
A London Girl of the (18)80s by Mary Vivian Hughes (1936). Hughes's second autobiographical book, chronicling her life at school, as a student and in her first few years of independent adulthood. Much like the first book, this one is both very specific and historically fascinating, and I really enjoyed the descriptions of life at a London girls' school and especially at the beginnings of the teacher training college that's now Hughes Hall, Cambridge—such an interesting moment in history, and the bits about educational philosophies and their development in girls' education at this period made very good reading. As ever, Hughes writes about everything with a lovely warmth and humour—despite experiencing some serious hardships and tragedies, she seems to have lived a very happy life on the whole, and her descriptions of that happiness are always so alive. Very enjoyable.
No Fond Return of Love by Barbara Pym (1961). I'd read this once several years ago and didn't remember much about it, so it was fun to revisit. It follows Dulcie Mainwaring, who lives alone in a London suburb and enlivens her existence by indulging a frankly fearsome inquisitiveness about other people's lives, which she apparently shared with her creator. Dulcie's curiosity leads her to investigate the life of Aylwin Forbes, an academic journal editor whom Dulcie, who also does work in research, index-making and such things, meets at a learned conference and quietly falls in love with. While I greatly enjoyed reading about Dulcie, her researches and her thoughts about the people around her, and liked the minor characters and all the brilliant little details of Barbara Pym's writing, I think the romance let this one down for me. It is often a bit of a mystery what Pym's women actually see in her men (except for Piers, of course <3), but I found Aylwin especially unlikeable, and—despite Dulcie's outburst at the seaside, which I liked her better for—the ending correspondingly unsatisfying. Oh, and the main characters from A Glass of Blessings have a cameo in this one, visiting a historic West Country castle and opining about the curtains—I liked that too!
Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love and Scandal in Wilde Times by Morris B. Kaplan (2005). Despite the rather sensational title, this was a very interesting history book. It's about the background to the Oscar Wilde trials, rather than the trials themselves. Kaplan presents three case studies involving relationships between men and attitudes towards them in late nineteenth-century Britain—the Boulton and Park trials of 1870-71, the lives of the circle of boys and men surrounding Eton master William Johnson (Cory) who left his post in mysterious disgrace in 1872, and the Cleveland Street scandal in its place amongst other political sex scandals of the 1880s and early 90s—and examines the range and complexity (basically, it's very complex and wide-ranging) of situations, events, emotions, attitudes, opinions etc. they reveal, before discussing Wilde's fate in the context thus built up. John Addington Symonds is a major presence throughout, as is the entertainingly OTT contemporary pornographic novel The Sins of the Cities of the Plain. Loads and loads of really fascinating information. Kaplan is very insistent about taking the past on its own terms and letting historical people speak for themselves—the chapters are full of quotes from letters, court records, newspapers and so on—and while some of the theoretical development in the concluding sections went a bit over my head, I found the whole thing very interesting and illuminating.
A London Girl of the (18)80s by Mary Vivian Hughes (1936). Hughes's second autobiographical book, chronicling her life at school, as a student and in her first few years of independent adulthood. Much like the first book, this one is both very specific and historically fascinating, and I really enjoyed the descriptions of life at a London girls' school and especially at the beginnings of the teacher training college that's now Hughes Hall, Cambridge—such an interesting moment in history, and the bits about educational philosophies and their development in girls' education at this period made very good reading. As ever, Hughes writes about everything with a lovely warmth and humour—despite experiencing some serious hardships and tragedies, she seems to have lived a very happy life on the whole, and her descriptions of that happiness are always so alive. Very enjoyable.
No Fond Return of Love by Barbara Pym (1961). I'd read this once several years ago and didn't remember much about it, so it was fun to revisit. It follows Dulcie Mainwaring, who lives alone in a London suburb and enlivens her existence by indulging a frankly fearsome inquisitiveness about other people's lives, which she apparently shared with her creator. Dulcie's curiosity leads her to investigate the life of Aylwin Forbes, an academic journal editor whom Dulcie, who also does work in research, index-making and such things, meets at a learned conference and quietly falls in love with. While I greatly enjoyed reading about Dulcie, her researches and her thoughts about the people around her, and liked the minor characters and all the brilliant little details of Barbara Pym's writing, I think the romance let this one down for me. It is often a bit of a mystery what Pym's women actually see in her men (except for Piers, of course <3), but I found Aylwin especially unlikeable, and—despite Dulcie's outburst at the seaside, which I liked her better for—the ending correspondingly unsatisfying. Oh, and the main characters from A Glass of Blessings have a cameo in this one, visiting a historic West Country castle and opining about the curtains—I liked that too!
Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love and Scandal in Wilde Times by Morris B. Kaplan (2005). Despite the rather sensational title, this was a very interesting history book. It's about the background to the Oscar Wilde trials, rather than the trials themselves. Kaplan presents three case studies involving relationships between men and attitudes towards them in late nineteenth-century Britain—the Boulton and Park trials of 1870-71, the lives of the circle of boys and men surrounding Eton master William Johnson (Cory) who left his post in mysterious disgrace in 1872, and the Cleveland Street scandal in its place amongst other political sex scandals of the 1880s and early 90s—and examines the range and complexity (basically, it's very complex and wide-ranging) of situations, events, emotions, attitudes, opinions etc. they reveal, before discussing Wilde's fate in the context thus built up. John Addington Symonds is a major presence throughout, as is the entertainingly OTT contemporary pornographic novel The Sins of the Cities of the Plain. Loads and loads of really fascinating information. Kaplan is very insistent about taking the past on its own terms and letting historical people speak for themselves—the chapters are full of quotes from letters, court records, newspapers and so on—and while some of the theoretical development in the concluding sections went a bit over my head, I found the whole thing very interesting and illuminating.
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Date: Mar. 25th, 2021 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 25th, 2021 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 27th, 2021 10:20 am (UTC)Somehow I feel like I enjoy reading your reviews of Barabara Pym's books more than I would enjoy the actual books! :D
In the past I've avoided reading non-fiction about the Oscar Wilde trials, because I got the impression that his life wasn't at all typical of the experience of the average gay man at the time. But that Kaplan book looks pretty interesting. Have you ever read Strangers by Graham Robb? It covers much the same ground but over a longer time period (the whole of the 19th century, if I remember correctly) and is very well written.
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Date: Mar. 27th, 2021 05:31 pm (UTC)No, it wasn't—but I thought this book did a really good job of showing how the Wilde trials reflect all sorts of broadly relevant aspects of society. Contemporary debates about art, urbanisation and moral decay in general all make appearances, as well as attitudes to homosexuality as such. I especially enjoyed the discussion of how the experiences of gay men were shaped by social class, a major theme of the book.
Strangers is next on my list, in fact! (I'm working my way through these recommendations). I'm glad to hear it's well written.
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Date: Mar. 27th, 2021 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 28th, 2021 03:59 pm (UTC)