Antiquarian and Classic Book Reviews
The Victorian era ranged roughly from 1837 (the coronation of Queen Victoria) until 1901 (Queen Victoria’s death). This era is known for its adherence to rules of decorum, its contradictory ideas about scientific progress and mysticism, and its works of fiction. Many novelists that are still famous today wrote during the Victorian Era.
This time period overlaps heavily with the Realist Movement and includes La Belle Époque. Novels and fiction written during this time were generally about as realistic as modern genre fiction — some were more heavily fantastical in nature than others. Modern idea of genre fiction also developed during this time period.
Examples of Victorian era authors include: Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne, George Eliot, the Brontës, Thomas Hardy, W.B. Yeats, William Thackeray, H.G. Wells, A.C. Doyle, Thoreau, Elizabeth Gaskell, Anthony Trollope, Anna Sewell, Rudyard Kipling, and Lewis Carroll.
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Both of these volumes are perfect for a night spent inside in the warmth of the fireside. Easy to get lost in, they are easily finished in a sitting and just begging to be turned over in your head or discussed with your favourite bookish friend.
As Alice evades her dour sister on the riverbank and slips into the realm of cats that talk and tea parties with rotating cups, she is finding the joy of being in one’s own world and one’s own mind.
I honestly thought that the book would be more about Termeer’s marriage to Anna, the daughter of his financial guardian. But I think the real meat of the narrative has to do with Termeer speaking to the reader about who he is and what factors in his life formed him (in his own opinion).
A modern reader will perhaps be struck by the religious bent of her speeches and arguments that hinge on some outdated ideas, but it’s important to realize that Truth was an essential starting point for the fight for equality for women and for suffrage. She was the beginning of the evolution of what that fight became and how it continued.
One minute you’re reading an extended metaphor about moths, and the next you’re musing about the function of legs along with the narrator before being pleasantly plopped back into the story.
The story is one that has been told so many times, but it’s one that has long withstood the test of time. In fact, it’s hard to believe that A Christmas Carol is nearly 200 years old.
It’s surprising that her name seems mostly lost to time — like the grand majority female writers of the Victorian era. What makes it more of a tragedy in Oliphant’s case is that her work is quite good — even better than a lot of writers whose names I’ve seen on the more mainstream ghost story anthologies.
I was gifted Charlotte M Yonge’s writing because she had such a presence for other writers. She was thought of so highly among her contemporaries.
my local independent bookstore called to inform me that my copy of the British Library’s (Tales of the Weird Collection) Chill Tidings had arrived. That made a Christmas in July post impossible to resist.
When I think about our little car and the time spent in it, I have a hard time imagining what it must have been like travelling by coach across the England.
