Sleep is good, books are better
I admit it. I'm a bit of a list fiend. I'm attracted to them like a cat to catnip. So I was particularly interested to find this list while browsing the Times Lit blog. It's a '100 Best Novels' list. There are many of these lists about - the only difference is this was one... Continue Reading →
No. 5. Bertha Mason and Edward Rochester from Jane Eyre Spoiler alert! Clearly not a successful marriage. Bertha is insane, can't be divorced and has pyromaniac and suicidal tendencies. Certainly she has her own story to tell (as imagined in Wide Sargasso Sea). It can't help a marriage when wife number two is waiting in... Continue Reading →
The Classics Club You can read about The Classics Club here. The challenge is to read at least 50 classics within a set period of time – no more than five years – and write about them. [There is a bit more to it than that, so please go to the website if you are... Continue Reading →
No. 6. Anna Karenina and Alexei Vronsky from Anna Karenina Spoiler alert! OK - so your husband is as dull as a potato and Count Vronsky is handsome, charming and passionate. But you're in Russia and look at the calendar - it's 1873. This is not a relationship with good prospects. For Vronsky: Anna will... Continue Reading →
No. 7. Arabella Donn and Jude Fawley from Jude the Obscure Spoiler alert! Wonderful writing, but such a sad tale. Jude was the first adult book I ever read. Thank you, Bromley Public Library. A strange choice for a child really, especially given the ending! Even so, I could tell there was something magical about... Continue Reading →
No. 8. Dorothea and Edward Casaubon from Middlemarch (George Eliot) Spoiler alert! Another of Eliot’s brilliant portraits of a hopeless pairing. Dorothea (“Dodo”) is a sheltered and intense young woman with a background in English and Swiss Puritanism: Riding was an indulgence which she allowed herself in spite of conscious qualms; she felt she enjoyed... Continue Reading →
No. 9. Lydia Bennet and George Wickham from Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) Spoiler alert! The marital prognosis on this relationship isn’t good, I fear. Wickham is a compulsive liar, gambler, debtor and idler. He has previously attempted to elope with Darcy’s young sister to access her fortune. Then he elopes with Lydia, Elizabeth’s 15... Continue Reading →
No. 10. Rosamund Vincy and Dr Lydgate from Middlemarch Spoiler alert! Rosamund and Lydgate: One of the many gems to be found in George Eliot's Middlemarch is the genius psychological portraits of Dr Tertius Lydgate and Miss Rosamund Vincy (soon Mrs Lydgate) - including how their marriage faired from early pleasure, through crisis and life-sapping... Continue Reading →
No. 11. Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins: Charlotte Lucas seems a pleasant young woman. She has a sense of humour and is a close friend of the delightful Elizabeth Bennet. What a shame then that she marries that fawning, conceited, potato and chimney connoisseur, Mr Collins.... Continue Reading →
The Long Victorian 