Tag: British Classic Novels

Dead Man’s Rock – Arthur Quiller-Couch (1887)

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What makes a book a classic?  Is it to do with age?  With its popularity when it was published?  Its staying power?  Its literary worth?  Probably a combination of these and many other factors.  As far as I am concerned I have just read a novel which deserves classic status yet when I went on to GoodReads to give my five star rating I discovered there were no other reviews or ratings.  Am I the only person out there to have read this?  It’s a little gem!

You may have heard of the name of Sir Arthur Quiller Couch (1863-1944).  He was the editor of the Oxford Book Of English Verse (1939) that seemed to be on everyone’s bookshelves at one point.  I’ve always had a copy.  The name conjured up for me an austere Victorian literary figure.  I never knew he was such a prolific writer with over 20 novels, loads of short stories, poetry and non-fiction works many of which were published under the pseudonym Q.  I recently purchased a Delphi Classic e-book edition which has all of these and this is the first novel from the Cornish resident published in 1887 when he was 24. 

Cornwall is often featured in his fiction and here the rugged coastline gives us Dead Man’s Rock, not far from The Lizard.  A perfect setting for an adventure tale and this is what we have here as three generations of the Trenoweth family become obsessed with treasure, especially a large ruby.  The grandfather indicated he had found it and hid it and left a will with cryptic instructions for his son to seek it only if in dire circumstances, he sets off to recover it and the search is once again picked up by his son, main character and narrator Jasper.

Jasper is eight years old when we first meet him and is so sophisticated in word and deed that it is later on recognised that the reader may struggle with plausibility and the narrator needs to intervene and explain it away.  “How will it be asked could any boy barely eight years of age conceive the thoughts and entertain the emotions there attributed to Jasper Trenoweth?”

But, park that to one side as the narrator urges and we get early on a clifftop scene reminiscent of the opening of “Great Expectations” (1861) with Pip and the convict, one of the most chilling encounters in classic fiction and to push the connection further, there’s later on a superbly cold female character, this novel’s equivalent of Miss Havisham.

The first half is pure adventure with travel, journals and events which felt more gripping and involving than “Treasure Island” (1882) which was published just five years earlier and was an obvious influence but there’s more to it than this as the second half develops and introduces characters, has a love story element and gets very dark indeed.  All the way through there is the sense of a plot moving forward without the padding there was in works drawn out to fit serialisation, something which even “Great Expectations” is guilty of.  In the opening sentences the narrator informs us he is going to impart “a plain tale, plainly told” and whereas he keeps the second part of the bargain, the first not at all as this is far too extraordinary a tale to be called plain.  Now, there are a lot of coincidences, but this is very common in works of this vintage, look at Thomas Hardy, but I was still able to buy into the implausible as I was enjoying what I was being given so much.

I really think this book deserves a larger audience.  A sensitive adaptation which conveys the swashbuckling adventure, the romance, melodrama and undeniable penny dreadful elements could reclaim this work.  I loved it.  If subsequent works are as good I think I’m going to be shouting Arthur Quiller-Couch’s name off rooftops to get him rediscovered.  It is certainly an under-rated classic up there with the best adventure tales and so readable.

You can buy his complete works from Delphi Classics currently available on Amazon for the paltry sum of £1.99.  Even if you only read his first novel (although skip the horrendously plot-spoiling introduction until afterwards) you will have a real bargain.

Dead Man’s Rock was originally published in 1887.

The Castle Of Otranto- Horace Walpole (1764)- A Book To “Read Before You Die”

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I certainly didn’t love my last choice taken from “1001 Books To Read Before You Die” edited by Peter Boxall (I’m using the “Clockwork Orange” fronted edition), Tobias Smollett’s “Adventures Of Peregrine Pickle” so hoping to enjoy my 7th pick more.  Here are the next five titles from which I made my choice:

Julie, Or The New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot

Emile, Or An Education- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Castle Of Otranto – Horace Walpole

The Vicar Of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith

An easy choice for me as I have on my shelves an unread copy of the Oxford 1994 edition of “Four Gothic Novels” of which Walpole’s tale is the first and earliest. (Perhaps I will encounter the others, William Beckford’s “Vattek”, Matthew Lewis’ “The Monk” and Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”- none of which I’ve read, yes, even I’m surprised by the Shelley admission, later on in this challenge).  I also didn’t realise, before starting, how short “The Castle Of Otranto” is. In the admittedly fairly miniscule print in the edition I read it comes in at 80 pages, which seemed even more reason to set the time machine forward 13 years from Smollett for this taster of eighteenth century Gothic.

This is credited as the grandfather of the Gothic genre, it’s popularity at the time confirming a style which has been one of the continuing highlights of literary experience ever since.  It takes place centuries earlier, around the time of The Crusades.  In the preface, Walpole uses the device of claiming it is from a discovered document translated from the Italian.  The author was later to say, certainly not the last to do so, that the plot came to him in a dream.

In the Castle of Otranto the heir to the title of Prince is crushed under a giant helmet when preparations for his wedding are under way.  (Still with me?) The line of succession looks shaky and so his father, the very unlikeable Manfred, decides to divorce his wife and marry his son’s betrothed, Isabella, in the hope that their union will bring forth sons.  Isabella is horrified by the advances of a man she was expecting to be her father-in-law and attempts to flee the castle.  These events are occurring because of a prophecy which can only end in further tragedy.

It is the Castle itself with its secret passages, dark corners where figures can lurk, its shadows which can disguise and confuse which provides much of the atmosphere we now recognise as Gothic but there is also a fair share of spectral apparitions and a sense of supernatural goings on throughout (not to mention the giant helmet!)

On the plus side, compared to some of the others I’ve read in this challenge. Walpole, probably due to the brevity of the piece, provides a narrative which keeps to the point, there’s few digressions from the plot nor a story within a story within a story tactics as employed by the earlier writers.  This does allow the narrative to build and increase the tension (such as it is).

I can’t imagine this would be anyone’s favourite example of the Gothic genre but I’m glad I read it for its significance of a book which inspired the next generations of writers.

This was Walpole’s only published novel.  He was the son of the first British Prime Minister and an MP himself.  His most lasting achievement in his life (1717-97) was his house which displayed his love of Gothic styles, Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, where he also had a printing press to produce his literary works.  The house and its gardens have been a popular attraction for over 250 years.

“The Castle Of Otranto” was first published in 1764.  I read the edition in “Four Gothic Novels” published by Oxford University Press.

William- An Englishman – Cicely Hamilton (1919)- Persephone Books #1

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Persephone Books was established in 1998 with an aim to rediscover mainly women writers from the early-mid twentieth century.  I’ve admired their classy grey covers and retro endpapers for years.  I’ve read a couple- Winifred Watson’s extremely likeable 1938 “Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day (#21) and on my shelves I have a treasured copy of the war diaries of Vere Hodgson “Few Eggs And No Oranges” (#9) which I first discovered as a history student at college and was delighted when Persephone republished it for this is one of the best diaries I’ve ever read, an extraordinary day-to-day account of what it was like to live and work in London during World War II.

The publishers have a shop in Bath and it was there I picked up their biannual magazine which listed all 149 of their rediscoveries.  A challenge then suggested itself – to buy and read them in order over the next few years and so on a subsequent trip #1 was purchased and it was a little treat to myself which certainly gave back.  It also came with a bookmark which matched the endpapers unique to the book and based on a 1913 design attributed to members of the Bloomsbury Group. 

I was very impressed by this work, its emotional honesty and authenticity.  William is a meek and mild Englishman very much in the shadow of his mother but when she dies he becomes far more involved in life and adopts socialist causes.  He meets and marries Griselda, a like-minded individual and whilst on their honeymoon in rural seclusion in the Ardennes in Belgium the Great War breaks out.

Cicely Hamilton wrote this during her own experiences of doing war work in Normandy.  In the Preface by Nicola Beauman she envisages the author writing in a tent amongst gunfire; “We are used to war poets writing poems in these circumstances and fiancés writing letters home: we are not used to women novelists writing novels.”

It is quite a dense read- I had to go back over sections a couple of times but it is so rewarding.  The tone changes from the almost teasing opening sections of William’s flirtations with socialism and his discovery of some purpose in life to becoming more realistic, sensitive and often tragic when the realities of war kicks in.  This change of tone really hits home how ordinary lives were transformed by war.  There’s no great heroism here and its power is because of that.  I thought it an extraordinary and very affecting account of one man’s war which by rights should be an acknowledged classic of war literature, especially as it was published so close to the end of hostilities.  If this standard is maintained for subsequent Persephone titles this is going to be a real joy of a reading challenge.

“William- An Englishman” was first published in 1919.  Persephone’s first edition of this arrived 80 years later.

The Adventures Of Peregrine Pickle- Tobias Smollett (1751) – A Book To “Read Before You Die”

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I’m up to the mid eighteenth century and ready to make my 6th pick from “The Clockwork Orange” fronted “1001 Books To Read Before You Die” edited by Peter Boxall.  My approach has been to divide the recommendations into groups of five and select one.  This time my choices were;

Peregrine Pickle- Tobias Smollett

Amelia- Henry Fielding

The Female Quixote- Charlotte Lennox

Candide-Voltaire

Rasselas – Samuel Johnson

I’ve already read a Fielding (“Joseph Andrews”) and as I missed out on a Smollett last time (“Roderick Random”) when I went for Samuel Richardson’s “Pamela” I thought I’d opt for the first on the list.  This was perhaps a mistake as this has been the least favourite of my choices by quite a margin.

I opted to read from a bargain priced Complete Works e-book, the Delphi Classics edition, where this is the second title after his more celebrated “Roderick Random”.  The trouble with this was that I couldn’t tell how much longer I had to read because it was obviously giving the percentage for the whole collection.  I did feel that this book would never end.  I knew there were 106 chapters and for most of it these were pretty much of similar length until I, very much wilting and feeling that the natural end to Smollett’s tale was fast approaching or had even come and gone I got to Chapter 81 where we depart from the hero’s adventures to a first-person narrative by a Lady Of Quality which I discovered was a three hour long chapter- certainly novella length within the novel.  Much the same happened later when Peregrine had hit hard times in the Fleet debtor’s prison and I was anticipating rich descriptions of his experiences there when a parson began a lengthy account of how two characters we’d never met before also came to be incarcerated.

“Peregrine Pickle” is described as a picaresque novel, a very popular form which I’d experienced with “Joseph Andrews”, “Moll Flanders” and “Don Quixote” (“Pamela’s sequence of letters makes it epistolary- which I felt had a very welcome different feel).  The “feel” of this novel is very much like what had gone on before, which I have enjoyed to a point, but which in my review of “Pamela” I described as “rambling road tales with many a digression and stories within stories”.  This is also apt for “Peregrine Pickle” which is the weakest of the picaresque novels I’ve read because

·         Peregrine Pickle is pretty unlikeable.  His youth is spent largely planning pranks, often really quite cruel and rarely amusing, on both friends and acquaintances.

·         The stories within the stories add little in the way of variety as they are pretty much more of the same, but having said this, some of the more succinct read as if they would make a more action-packed novel than the one I was reading (especially in the case of misanthrope Cadwallader Crabtree whose back story is entertaining and could have indeed been expanded to become a promising separate novel but who within the main narrative becomes tedious as a character).

·        Perhaps the two most likeable characters – a couple of old sea dogs whose continued support of Pickle is heartening speak in extended sailing-based metaphors which makes them a bit of a chore.

·         The author overloads us with information yet I couldn’t sense an author’s voice in the way in which I could in the other classics I’ve read to this point.  The introduction to the Delphi edition states that this novel was not a critical success and didn’t sell well (although I’ve not seen this anywhere else) so I am really surprised that it has lasted and is still acknowledged as an important work.

·         There were times when I was beginning to enjoy myself but frustration kept creeping in as the author underplayed scenes which felt promising in favour of more and more narrative which felt like, and I apologise for not a particularly astute critical observation here, just words.

Plot-wise, Peregrine Pickle is unpopular with his parents and is brought up by an old Commodore Uncle.  He meets a girl, Emilia, quite early on but his philanderings and obstinate nature doesn’t suggest a good match for her.  He embarks on The Grand Tour where fortunes waver (at one point he is in the Bastille) and on his return his attempts to be elected as an MP lead to his eventual ruin (the section at Fleet Prison) but we know that his journey will not be complete until bad fortunes are reversed and he has the potential to end up with Emilia.  It’s just that it takes a long time for this to happen.

The Adventures Of Peregrine Pickle was first published in 1751 and revised by the author for a later edition in 1758.  I read a Delphi Classics e-book edition.

Pamela-Samuel Richardson (1740) – A Book To “Read Before You Die”

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I’m a little confused about chronology.  Last time for this strand I read Henry Fielding’s “Joseph Andrews” published in 1742 in which Richardson’s main character is Fielding’s titular character’s sister and who makes an appearance.  I was surprised at the time that Peter Boxall’s “1001 Books To Read Before You Die” which I thought recommended books in the order that they appeared hadn’t mentioned “Pamela” but that’s because of my determination not to look ahead in the book.  I hadn’t seen it was the next title.  Dividing the recommendations into groups of five and choosing one, which has been my approach for this strand, here were my latest options:

Pamela – Samuel Richardson

Clarissa – Samuel Richardson

Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett

Tom Jones – Henry Fielding

Fanny Hill- John Cleland

I think I can see what’s happened here.  Boxall has 1742 for the “Pamela” publication date, the same year as “Joseph Andrews” and has put Fielding before Richardson alphabetically.  I chose to read “Pamela” as I had a copy sitting unread on my shelves but this Penguin edition has the publication date of 1740.  It’s a bit of a moot point anyway as Richardson revised this book regularly and the edition I read was reworked by the author in the 1750s but remained unpublished until his daughters approved its appearance in 1801, which is the version Penguin Classics have gone for.  Sorry, if I’ve confused you thus far!

“Pamela” is highly significant as it was the first best-seller which spawned translations, parodies (Henry Fielding’s “Shamela” being the most famous), spin-offs by other authors (ie; “Joseph Andrews”) and sequels.  Merchandise appeared with “Pamela” references and it became an important landmark in both English and European literature. Its structure, whilst not original, was significant.  It is largely an epistolary novel, written as letters by Pamela mainly to her parents, the rest is her journal, also intended to be read by her parents- there’s only a small intervention from the author, who adopts the guise of editor.

This gives this novel a different feel to what had gone before, which tended to be rambling road tales with many a digression and stories within stories.  Pamela is dealing with things as they happen, the plot develops as it goes along because she is writing either on the day events occurred or just after.  The plot as such can be summed up in the subtitle “Virtue Rewarded”.  Pamela spends a chunk of this novel trying to preserve hers.  She is a lady’s maid whose mistress has died and the son, known throughout as Mr B., is after her and goes to great lengths in his attempts to seduce her.  Coercive behaviour is highly present in the fiction of today and here, 280 years ago, we have a chilling, persistent example with Mr B.  Spread over two volumes, the first for me does achieve greatness.  The master’s plots to seduce Pamela and her foiling his lustful plans really drew me in.  In the second volume we get quite a lot of Mr B., through Pamela’s words, including a 48 point treatise on what makes a good wife and things become admittedly more of a slog.

I do find the whole background of this novel fascinating.  Samuel Richardson (1689-1761) was a printer, not an academic, and the idea came from a commission to produce a set of standard letters that could be used as templates for would-be letter-writers.  Pamela is not a lady, although she has been brought up in that environment, the parents she writes to are much simpler folk.  Pamela knows she is likely to be ruined if she gives in to Mr B. and around her Richardson devises a set of memorable characters who will help or hinder Mr B.’s plans. 

In our modern world the resolution is not that satisfactory.  I wouldn’t trust Mr B. and the way things turn out would have been likely to have been surprising and yet pleasing to Richardson’s contemporary readers.  All in all, this is a highly important if not totally involving work.  I did feel, when I was mid-way through the first volume that this might be the earliest work I would give five stars to- but the protracted, more didactic nature of the second half meant that it was not quite there for me.

The Penguin Classics edition I read with an introduction by Margaret A Doody states that “Pamela” was first published in 1740.

100 Essential Books – Great Expectations- Charles Dickens (1861)

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It’s been a good few years since I’ve read any Dickens novels (15 to be exact when I stumbled through “The Mystery Of Edwin Drood”) but I was certainly keen to do so after reading Peter Ackroyd’s majestic biography earlier this year.  I hadn’t read “Great Expectations” since I was at college and rediscovering this now has put Dickens back up into my Top 3 most-read authors (ironically leap-frogging over his biographer Peter Ackroyd). 

I have had a copy of this on my shelves for decades.  When I was 18 an Aunt bought me the introductory offer for a Charles Dickens book club from Heron Books.  I bought a few more myself over the next few months but became miffed that some of the bigger books were printed in two volumes and thus cost twice as much and so cancelled my subscription.  My aunt had thought it sensible that I should buy books that would last rather than paperbacks and she was right as my one chunky volume of “Great Expectations” has certainly lasted.

Once again my feelings about this, Dickens’ 13th and penultimate finished novel have been confirmed.  In the first part, really up until Pip goes to London, we not only have Dickens’ best writing and story-telling but one of the greatest opening sections of any novel ever.  (Ditto the 1946 film version which scared the living daylights out of me as child and may be one of the reasons why my response feels so entrenched).  The encounter on the marshes, the Christmas meal, the capture, Miss Havisham and Estella are all exceptional moments.  When Pip moves to London with his Great Expectations intact (or when John Mills becomes Pip in the film) the disappointment  begins to creep in.  His relationship with the Pocket family, Wemmick and his aged parent, Drummle and Startop would probably  involve me more in other of Dickens’ novels but here it feels like he is treading water, in reality, keeping the monthly editions churning.  Admittedly, as the plot thickens when Pip is faced with the truth about his fortunes things certainly pick up if not quite to the level of the sheer magnificence of the opening.

This does, however, taken as a whole, remain one of Dickens’ greatest works and deserves a lofty place in the canon of English Literature.  It is one of the great first-person narratives.  There is the controversy of the three endings which Dickens wrote, which I can vaguely recall but always find myself having to look up the information about that because I can’t seem to retain how they are different (although I do know how this aspect influenced John Fowles’ “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”).  The version I read favoured the third ending, although this is apparently not always the case in the published editions available.  I think, being of a cynical nature, I might have approved of the less happy ending which Wilkie Collins persuaded Dickens to revise- I’m not sure Estella could ever be trusted.

First published in 1861.  “Great Expectations” is available in many versions in all formats.

Joseph Andrews- Henry Fielding (1742) – A Book To Read “Before You Die”

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Time for one of my occasional bursts of classic fiction taken from Peter Boxall’s book “1001 Books To Read Before You Die” (I’m using the 2006 edition with “The Clockwork Orange cover).  So far I’ve read “The Golden Ass”, “Don Quixote” and “Moll Flanders” which has taken me up to 1722.  I’m dividing the chronological recommendations into groups of five and choosing one.  The next five were:

Roxana -Daniel Defoe

Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift

A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift

Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding

Memoirs Of Martinus Scriblerus

I have already read a Defoe this year and as I mentioned in my review of “Moll Flanders” my experience with Swift was not good, so I’d rather not and I wasn’t even sure what the last title was so that left Fielding’s second most notable work which dates from 1747 – so I added 25 years onto the time machine for a mid-eighteenth century reading experience.

Fielding (sort of) describes this as a comic epic and it once again had me looking up the definition of “picaresque” (I can never retain what that means) which came to mind when reading it.  It’s an “episodic style of fiction dealing with the adventures of a rough and dishonest but appealing hero”.  Well, the first part applies but not the second as Fielding’s titular hero is virtuous and honest and just a little bland- for a significant chunk of the book he doesn’t feel present at all but Fielding has catered for this with his full title “The History of The Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and of his friend Mr Abraham Adam” and it is this co-star, the goodly natured but often bumbling parson who gets into most scrapes.  Much of the novel takes place on the road and is thus very reminiscent of “Don Quixote” but here the humour is less broad and the shenanigans more quickly resolved.

It seems Fielding is doing something which still feels highly unusual in borrowing a character, Pamela, from Samuel Richardson’s 1740 best-seller as Joseph is her brother.  The edition I read also had “Shamela” Fielding’s parody of that book which I didn’t read because I thought I would have had to read “Pamela” to get much from it and whereas I had fully expected that book, often credited as the first English novel, to be one of Boxalls’ recommendations it wasn’t so I took the hint implicit in that and decided I may get round to it in the future.  Fielding also seems to have an obsession with one Colley Cibber, a contemporary of his who was a leading light in the theatre and Poet Laureate.  His 1740 memoir is poked fun at in the proceedings.  If you are planning to read this book I would suggest splashing out on a good version with notes etc. to support your reading.  I read an e-book by SMK (it did only cost 75p on Amazon) and it was without notes and had an uncredited and not especially helpful introduction.

As expected with literature from this era there are many digressions and stories within the story which the readership at the time would have expected but which tends to trip us up today.  I kept up with it more than the admittedly much longer “Don Quixote”, but didn’t quite get the same level of overall satisfaction and didn’t enjoy is as much as “Moll Flanders” but where it is stronger is in a fuller cast of well-drawn characters and it does feel like it is getting somewhere faster than the Cervantes tome.  As I was wavering between a three and four star rating we had a bed-hopping farcical scene which actually had me chuckling 280 years on and everything was resolved highly satisfactorily which pushes it into four star territory as I would certainly consider reading this again in the future.

Joseph Andrews was first published in 1742.  I read an e-book edition which also includes “Shamela” (a few of them do) published by SMK.

The Sea The Sea – Iris Murdoch (1978)

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Does anyone still read Iris Murdoch these days?  She seems to have gone out of fashion.  I haven’t read her since 1997 when “The Green Knight” (1993), one of her later novels, really did nothing for me but back in the early-mid 80’s I read quite a few and one of my favourites was this 1978 Booker Prize winning title. I couldn’t actually remember any details of what it was about but I have over the years experienced occasional echoes of what I recalled as a very atmospheric piece which has the sea central to the characters and plot.

Actually, on re-read the sea wasn’t quite as omnipresent as I thought I remembered.  This is the tale of Charles Arrowby, a notable aging thespian, who retires to a simple life in a pretty ropey house close to the sea in order to escape London life.  The novel starts off as his memoir, a record of the women in his life, until the people he is writing about appear back in his isolated existence.  At first it seems almost as if he is hallucinating, early on he spots what he believes to be a sea monster in the waves and with people from his past re-appearing the reader suspects he is losing his grip on his mental faculties.  But, however implausible their reasons for being back in his life they are there and this coming and going at one point resembles a theatrical farce.  When he re- encounters the person he saw as the love of his life the novel shifts into a record of obsession.

Mid-way through I was finding it quite magnificent with the always fairly obnoxious Charles out of control, misjudging situations and behaving inappropriately.  It feels like it has come to a conclusion in a couple of places but Murdoch continues the tale using her love of analysis and philosophy which is both characteristic of her as a writer and occasionally a little wearying which might explain why she is not read as much as she used to be. She is not an easy read, her references make the text quite dense and there is much navel-gazing from her characters.  I remembered why I liked her so much and why I also found her frustrating but I was left with the general impression that I didn’t enjoy this as much as I did the first time round decades ago. The world she creates seems more alien now, it is not always easy to get what is motivating the characters and particularly here why Charles Arrowby is considered an attractive proposition when he is so hard to like. I did very much like the magnetic pull of the sea which she describes brilliantly throughout.

I’m not sure whether the Iris Murdoch revival is imminent but I was glad to revisit as she is one of those people whose demise has overshadowed her work.  The accounts of her heart-breaking dementia in her final years have been famously portrayed by her husband in writing and film adaptation and the image I have had stuck in my mind is this fervently intellectual mind ending up devouring episodes of “Teletubbies”.  Reading a work from when she was in her prime has rebalanced this for me.

The Sea The Sea was first published in 1978.  I read a Vintage Classics paperback edition.

Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe (1722) – A Book To “Read Before You Die”

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This was my third dip into Peter Boxall’s “1001 Books To Read Before You Die” which has already had me reading “The Golden Ass” and “Don Quixote”.  I’m dividing the recommendations into groups of five and choosing one. If I’ve read one before in the last 27 years it doesn’t count.  This made the next five choices:

The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan

The Princess Of Cleves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche De Lavergne

Ooronoko- Aphra Benn

Love In Excess – Eliza Haywood

Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe

I skipped past two titles because of the rules I’ve set myself.  “A Tale Of A Tub” by Jonathan Swift (1704) I read in 2005 and have no desire to read it again.  I really didn’t get anything from it, it was a 1* read for me and has probably put me off reading any more Swift for life.  The other, “Robinson Crusoe” by Daniel Defoe (1719) I read in 2008, it wasn’t what I had expected and I rated it a disappointing 2*.  Very aware that what I have done up to now is choose the most recent in these chronological lists I balanced that with choosing the book with a celebration this year as it is 300 years since the publication of Defoe’s second most famous book “Moll Flanders”.

I do believe I have read this before, as a teenager or in my early 20’s, I certainly had a copy on my shelves for a number of years but as this would have been longer than 27 years ago I thought it was time for another go, hoping that it would not be a let-down as “Robinson Crusoe” was.  It is subtitled “…who was born in Newgate, and during a life of continu’d Variety for Threescore years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Years a Whore, five times a wife (whereof once to her brother), Twelve Years a Thief,  Eight Years a Transported felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv’d Honest and died a Penitent”. The eighteenth century not at all concerned about plot-spoilers then!

Given this description it is far less sensational a work than I had imagined.  I’m wondering if I’ve had it confused in my head with John Cleland’s more notorious “Fanny Hill” from 1748, considered the first pornographic novel. In fact, Defoe’s work is also not quite a moral tract, but it is not that far off.  In the Introduction to the Wordsworth edition I read R T Jones explores the purpose of this novel and there is just too much joy within Moll’s cataloguing of her wrong-doings for it to be seen on self-improvement terms.  Defoe’s decision to guise his novel as a true account may have been a commercial one, attracting a younger readership guided away from the sensational novels of the era by parents who would allow their offspring to learn through what might be seen as a more pious journey of self-discovery.  This conceit of writing Moll’s narrative as if it was true does affect its readability however.  Most characters cannot be named and so “this gentleman” and “that gentleman” becomes confusing at times and just a tad tedious.  If only Defoe had felt able to give his cast names this would really have brought Moll’s tale and world to life.

Another purpose of Defoe’s penning this novel could have been to provide a lesson in street-life to the uninitiated.  Moll describes her crimes and those she has gulled and the methods by which she tricks them in a way that readers might learn not to be taken in thus (there’s another side of the coin here, the less honest could learn from the outlining of such crimes how to carry them off but it is unlikely that those keen to profit as Moll did would have been amongst the eighteenth-century readership). 

Moll comes across a vibrant, well-rounded character.  She’s on a continual slippery slope but blames no-one but herself and is able to put a brake on the road to ruin when needed.  Men do cause her downfall but she has a good relationship with them and is able to give as good as she gets.  Her incestuous marriage is a complete accident and leads to one of the most involving sections of the book.  I did enjoy this although it dragged for me in the mid-sections, the accounts of her youth and the latter part of the book (I can’t say declining years as there is no decline) provided a highly satisfying read and for me this book felt so much stronger than “Robinson Crusoe”.  We are not quite in 5* territory from my twenty-first century perspective of these earliest of novels but I’m sure we will not have to move forward too far chronologically before I start awarding my top rating.

I read the Wordsworth Classics Paperback edition of “Moll Flanders” from 2001 with an introduction by R T Jones.

The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles (1969)

On By philshanklinIn Uncategorized7 Comments

fowles

If you had asked me 30 years ago to list my favourite books this would have featured prominently.  I’ve always felt an attachment to it because it was one of the first novels I read when I went away to college and an essay on works by John Fowles (of which this was my favourite) scored me a rare A-Grade.  I’ve read it a couple of times since but not for many years.  Last summer I went for a day trip to Lyme Regis and walked along The Cobb which has a prominent part to play in the novel as well as in the 1981 film adaptation starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons and whilst doing this felt once again that I wanted to be immersed in Fowles’ 19th Century world.  My copy was ancient and yellowed so I treated myself to a new one at Serendip, one of Lyme’s healthy smattering of book shops and have spent the last week or so discovering whether time has been good to this novel.

What remains impressive is how Fowles has condensed the foibles of Victorian society  in a way which makes it seem authentic.  This has been done many times since, most splendidly in Michel Faber’s “Crimson Petal And The White” and in other titles which tend to feature highly in my end of year lists.  What I hadn’t experienced before reading this the first time was Fowles the modern author stepping back from the Victorian novel to comment and digress using a modern perspective.  Once again this is a common trick now but when I first experienced it (and perhaps even more so when it was published a good decade before I got round to it) it seemed radical.    It’s enough of a feature of the novel for them to attempt to convey something of this in the film (not wholly successfully) by having a modern strand which stepped back showing the making of the film and depicting actors playing Fowles’ characters, so Meryl Streep was both playing Sarah Woodruff and the actress chosen to play her.

Charles Smithson, a keen fossil-hunter and fan of Darwin spends the summer of 1867 in Lyme Regis where his betrothed, the somewhat vapid Ernestina is holidaying with her aunt.  There, on The Cobb, which stretches out to the sea they encounter a swathed, mysterious figure known locally as Tragedy, reputedly waiting for her French lover to return.  Charles becomes obsessed with this woman which challenges Victorian beliefs in decency, class and duty with the double standards we now expect from this period.

I love the plot.  Fowles, however, does like to move away from it and remind us of the artifice of his fiction.  At one point he inserts himself into the action observing Charles in the midst of his dilemmas.  It is a very intelligent work which does make demands of the reader and on this re-reading I must admit it does occasionally seem a little too clever for its own good (perhaps that was also true of the me who read this many years ago!) and occasionally a little inaccessible.  This accusation could be levied at other of Fowles’ work which may explain why his reputation has faded in the years since his death in 2005.  There were a couple of titles I can remember abandoning (and this from someone who has done this very rarely) due to this inaccessibility, although I do have a copy of “The Collector” (1963) which I also loved and should get round to re-reading to see how that holds up.

This is an impressive novel of great richness and worthy of a five star rating yet it still has flaws which seem a little more  obvious this time round.  I’ve never fully got my head around the multiple endings which makes the last third of the novel less satisfying.  I could tell from my trip to Lyme that the townsfolk are still proud of this novel (as they are of Jane Austen who features it in “Persuasion”) and actually it is only when it moves away from Lyme that it slightly falters.  I still feel very attached to it, however.

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The French Lieutenant’s Woman was first published in 1969.  I read the Vintage paperback edition.