Sleep is good, books are better
The following is the transcript from a video I have just put up on Youtube ("Victorian Chronicles"). My first ever edited video - so it's a bit of an experiment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atuiuBL2EfU TRANSCRIPT: For me creativity is not very far from playfulness. And Jane Austen was a highly creative person. Here she is barely 16 years... Continue Reading →
Happy birthday, Thomas Hardy! Today is the birthday of Thomas Hardy (b.2 June 1840 – d.11 January 1928). Hardy was a celebrated and influential English novelist and poet. And is a favourite of mine. Author of such works as Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891),... 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 →
Poor Jude. Life somehow got in the way. Jude was the first adult book I ever read. Bromley Public Library. A strange choice really, especially given the ending! Even so, I could tell there was something magical about it – the power of writing and dreams. https://uk.pinterest.com/longvictorian2/thomas-hardy/
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 →
Where is Anne Catherick?! Or to be more accurate where is this painting? In a Tumblr post on Wilkie Collins' sensational novel The Woman in White, I used the Pre-Raphaelite painting for illustration. The Somnambulist by John Everett Millais. It is thought by some that Millais was inspired by the book. It left me wanting... 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 