#historical literature

[wildfellweekly]

New Book Club for Autumn 2023!

Announcing Wildfell Weekly, a substack read-a-long for Anne Brontë's novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall!

You must go back with me to the autumn of 1827.

A new tenant has taken up residence in old Wildfell Hall and Mr. Gilbert Markham finds himself very intrigued. But the widow Mrs. Helen Graham is more than what she seems, and as rumors about her start to fly, she reveals to a doubting Gilbert the truth about the disastrous marriage she left behind.

Anne Brontë differed from her sisters Charlotte (Jane Eyre) and Emily (Wuthering Heights) in favoring a Realist rather than Romantic approach to her writing. In Tenant she explored themes of domestic violence, alcoholism and addiction, gender relations, motherhood and marriage, and the ability of women to define their own lives with an unflinching desire to depict what she saw to be true. While now considered among the first feminist novels, critics of Anne's day were shocked by a book they found coarse, brutal, and overly graphic.

So starting October 26, 2023 and until June 10, 2024, let's read together a story one nineteenth century critic called "utterly unfit to be put in the hands of girls"!

Find More Information about the Project and Subscribe Here!

[thatscarletflycatcher]

British authors writing Italian characters:

[aroundtheworldwithphillyfogg]

I ask your forgiveness and your kind patience while I pitch this to you on these trying times:

A chronological reading of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days.

THIS IS NOT A SUBSTACK, NO EMAILS.

This is a Tumblr blog, where we will be posting the corresponding text for every day, and then a post at the exact time the main character -Phileas Fogg- reaches certain locations, according to the times provided by the book. This way you can choose to what degree to engage with the text: you can subscribe to the blog and be notified of every post, catch texts on your timeline, or just know where in their journey the characters are, with the log posts. The choice is yours!

Around the World in 80 Days is an 1872 novel that follows eccentric British gentleman Phileas Fogg, as he bets to his club friends £20.000 that he can travel around the world in 80 days, and makes the trip with his recently hired valet, Passepartout.

We will start posting on October 1st, the day before Phileas Fogg Makes a Bet Day, and our last post will publish on December 22nd.

[eva-eyre]

one thing i really wish they included in jane eyre (2011) is the second wedding. they stopped right at the reunion, which leaves a lot to be desired, especially if you don’t know what comes next! the second wedding is my favorite piece of all the symbolism, because as opposed to the first in which mr rochester is anxious and rushing to get it done and jane is entirely confused and there’s just so much happening and so much going wrong, they are entirely content in the second wedding. they take their time, and do not even have any sort of formal take on a wedding, just going to a church only the two of them in their every day clothes, with nobody else to see them be wed. they are content and at peace, but that truly isn’t an understatement. jane holds her ground in the majority of the book past the reunion and it’s beautiful to see them truly meet each other’s needs and, in a sense, really look each other in the eye.

[amontaguscapulet]

As Marianne Dashwood once said,

“Mama, the more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much!”

[statelibraryqueensland]

Our librarians have decided, without reading any of the 16th century Latin, that this image must be attempting to portray… A monkfish.

Illustration from the Ortus Sanitatis: de herbis & plantis (1511). From the Rare Books Collection, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.

Source

[ladymacbethisagirlboss]

SUMMONING FREVBLR

Hi! I'm a student who is about to start studying the French revolution but knows very little about it. My mum lent me A Place of Greater Safety but apparently that's historically inaccurate, so do any of you have any good historical lit/ non fiction books on the revolution? Thank youu

[blackcatworshipcommittee]

Aglaia Epanchin sending the man she loves a hedgehog as an apology for mistreating him and later the same day asking “did you get my hedgehog?” Is the most relatable and autistic thing I’ve read in some time. Oh to be a strange young woman in love.

[atotc-weekly]

A Tale of Two Cities Weekly

Welcome back to ATOTC Weekly, where you can read Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities in its original serialized format! Chapters are posted once a week on Tuesdays starting April 30th and ending November 26. On Saturdays, I'll reblog my annotations from last year's read-through.

If you want to join in the fun and add your commentary, you can use the tag #atotc weekly! For more information, please see the pinned post :)

[ibebizi]

Canta, dulçhe paxarillo, todo gala y todo brío, más galante y más constante que el sol bello a su apuntar, a su apuntar.

Pero advierte qué desvelos da el amor y crudos selos al constante y fino amante sin dexarle descansar, y descansar.

Passo firme my tormento con disgusto y sin contento, todo amargo y sin descargo de quien me quiere matar, quiere matar.

No se aduele quien me mata, siempre fiera y siempre ingrata, su contento es my lamento, su alegría es my penar, es my penar.

[poetryofmac]

Heathcliff is . . . the subject of important search results.

[thatscarletflycatcher]

I have said good things about Verena in the Midst, by E.V. Lucas. His Advisory Ben is EVEN BETTER. I read it today in about two sittings (had doctor's waiting room time to burn) and I finished it with a smile and that sweet glow that finishing a satisfying book gives.

Ben is short for Benita, an efficient, level headed young woman of 22, whose father, a very fussy man, has just remarried. Ben sees this as the moment to leave home and get a job. During a visit to a country family desperate to find a shaker in the middle of nowhere, Ben conceives the idea of setting up an agency to run errands for country people, and generally orient and advice. She leases a place on top of a used books shop, just recently set up by two WWI veterans (the novel is set in the 1920s), gets herself an assistant and an errand boy, and sets up to work.

Like Verena in the Midst, this is another solid light short novel, but this one has much more of a plot. It's also funnier. It has a love triangle that didn't make me cringe. Ben's work is so interesting, and the people that come to her for help and her relatives are also fun and quirky in their own ways. It has a proposal scene that lands.

Verena in the Midst made me want a radio drama. This one made me want a movie.

Maybe producing companies should just hire someone to peruse public domain works instead of so many remakes and sequels.

Anyways, neither will change your life, but I do think the public here would enjoy either or both.

[aroundtheworldwithphillyfogg]

I ask your forgiveness and your kind patience (again) while I pitch this to you on these trying times, because the first post didn't show up on tags. I promise this will be the last one before the book posts begin:

A chronological reading of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days.

THIS IS NOT A SUBSTACK, NO EMAILS.

This is a Tumblr blog, where we will be posting the corresponding text for every day, and then a post at the exact time the main character -Phileas Fogg- reaches certain locations, according to the times provided by the book. This way you can choose to what degree to engage with the text: you can turn on notifications to the blog and be notified of every post, catch texts on your timeline, or just know where in their journey the characters are, with the log posts. The choice is yours!

Around the World in 80 Days is an 1872 adventure novel that follows eccentric British gentleman Phileas Fogg, as he bets to his club friends £20.000 that he can travel around the world in 80 days, and makes the trip with his recently hired valet, Passepartout.

We will start posting on October 1st, the day before Phileas Fogg Makes a Bet Day, and our last post will publish on December 22nd.

[another-livy-wannabe]

Something interesting (though possibly a stretch) in this comparison between thirteenth century feudal Europe and Sung China.

“Of course Christianity was not the same as Confucianism, yet in interesting ways thirteenth-century administration of the Roman church paralleled Chinese bureaucratic procedures. At least rudimentary education was required to qualify… clergymen for office. Appointments were subject to papal review, at least in principle. Office was not hereditary, and a career open to talent often attracted gifted and ambitious men into clerical rank.

Moreover, Christian doctrine was quite as hostile to the concept of the marketplace as was Confucianism. The condemnation of usury was more explicit and emphatic in Christian theology… and distrust between Christian clerics and Christian men-at-arms resembled the gulf separating Chinese mandarins from the soldiery of the Celestial Empire, though it was not nearly so wide. Had papal monarchy proved feasible, Western Europe’s history would not have duplicated China’s bureaucratic experience, but divergences would surely have been far fewer than they actually were.”

-The Pursuit of Power (1982) by William H. McNeill

[eva-eyre]

i’ve done a few historical costumes lately!

the first is jane eyre from the novel of the same name, and the second is a remake of elisabeth of austria’s star dress!

[pinkradfem]

livin da life