Persephone

William – an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton (Novella a Day in May #2)

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William - an Englishman – Persephone Books

William – an Englishman (1919) by Cicely Hamilton isn’t really a novella, coming in at 226 pages, but I needed to reread it for Tea or Books? so I thought a Bank Holiday Monday was a great opportunity to read something a bit longer. Never too early to break the rules!

I can’t remember when I originally read this book, but not that much of it had stayed in my mind – except some searing scenes. And this is a decidedly searing book. It was the first novel published by Persephone Books, and it certainly dispels from the off the idea that they only publish cosy books. It’s hard to imagine anything less cosy – William – an Englishman is almost a work of horror at times.

It is titled after William but it is also about his wife, with the rather absurd name Griselda. As the novel opens, they have not met – but both have been swept up in the contemporary tide of socialism and suffragism. It is 1913 at this point, I think, and both movements are in full sway. William and Griselda are not paddling in the shallow waters of these movements either. They have dedicated their whole lives, their whole beings, to the cause.

From that day forwards he devoted himself to what he termed public life – a ferment of protestation and grievance; sometimes genuine, sometimes manufactured or, at least, artificially heightened. He was an extremist, passionately well-intentioned and with all the extremist’s contempt for those who balance, see difficulties and strive to give the other side its due.

Hamilton writes quite satirically about them. She doesn’t doubt their convictions, nor does she particularly undermine the causes for which they fight – she just portrays their extremism in the light of an authorial voice for whom calmness is the hallmark of good sense. The reader feels safe. There is a definite safety in seeing such passion from a distance, where we can turn it around in our mind, chuckling at its excesses.

But Hamilton has lured us into a false sense of security. The novel is about to become much less safe.

William and Griselda get married and set off to spend their honeymoon in Belgium, at the holiday home of a friend. They are three weeks into their time there, away from newspapers and letters and any contact with the outside world, when they spot some soldiers on the horizon. With their pacifist stances, they just mock the men out ‘playing at murder’. They do not realise that, since they last heard the news, a war has been declared – and Belgium has been invaded by German soldiers.

From here, William – an Englishman becomes much darker – even brutal. It is fast-paced, as the couple find themselves caught up with swift intensity in a situation they couldn’t have imagined. Hamilton switches tone expertly, and we can no longer smile at the naivety of this young pair. None of it feels melodramatic or gratuitous, simply because the horrors they are suddenly exposed to are horrors that genuinely happened to enormous numbers of people.

Later in the novel, I found the intensity flagged a little, and Hamilton loses a bit of her subtlety for a period – but the ending recaptures the pathos of the early novel. It’s extraordinary that this novel is more than a century old – it still feels fresh and vital, and one can’t help thinking about other invasions and violence happening in the world today.

Rachel and I will soon be recording an episode of Tea or Books? comparing this with a novel about a couple at the beginning of World War Two – Olivia Manning’s The Great Fortune. Look out for that!

One Woman’s Year by Stella Martin Currey

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There were several independent publishers I knew I wanted to read for #ReadIndies month, and of course Persephone was among them. But which one? Well, I was most excited about One Woman’s Year by Stella Martin Currey, published in 1953 but often seeming like it was a couple of decades earlier.

One Woman’s Year is a delightful journey through the year – an anthology of anecdotes, household hints, recipes, and so on. The story/anecdote bit is the longest and perhaps most delightful of each section – just tales from family life, about enjoying village life, the countryside, and everyday activities. From a very privileged position, of course, though they are not stories of expensive outings and excess. They are the sort of stories that would be brought out at family events – from a disastrous renovation project to a French exchange student. All are told with an enjoyably British sense of deprecating humour. I was often reminded of E.M. Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady, which is about the best thing to be reminded of.

Then each month has a cheerful look at the favourite chore of each month, and a wry look at the least favourite. Often this is more of a story than a genuine application, particularly all these decades later, but the recipes that follow could still be followed today, for the most part. Yes, there is an unsettling predilection for curry powder, particularly for someone who spent time in India with her military husband, but I might well be giving the strawberry shortcake a go at some point.

Each month ends with a short anthology of literary passages from novels and poems. These are usually the sorts of things that leave me cold, as I like to read with proper context, but Currey’s choices are brilliantly and thoughtfully done. For instance, she brings together a section from Cold Comfort Farm with an anonymous chronicler of an early nineteenth-century village and a poem about laburnums. Each month’s anthology works beautifully together. All the more impressive because this was, of course, long before the internet – these are quotations that Currey has drawn together from a lifetime of reading.

One of my favourite things about this book is that it’s fully illustrated with woodcuts by Malcolm Ford. No publisher has a deeper appreciation for woodcuts than Persephone Books, and these are second to the ones in The Runaway among my favourites they’ve done, either in their books or in the magazine.

Initially I intended to read one section each month, and make it last a year – well, I couldn’t stop once I’d started. Thank goodness Persephone resurrected such a lovely and comforting read.

Patience by John Coates

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A couple of weeks ago, Jessie at Dwell in Possibility organised a mini Persephone readathon. Basically, an excuse to get a Persephone book off the shelf and dig in – and I had a quick mosey through the ones I have unread on my shelves, and opted for Patience by John Coates, originally published in 1953.

Coates is one of those rare[ish] creatures – a male Persephone author – but his main character is a woman. ‘Patience’ is there as a theme throughout the novel, but it is also the name of the main character. She is a devoted mother to her children, and thinks she might be on the way to another. Here’s the rather wonderful opening line:

It was odd, thought Patience, that surprises never came singly, and that the day she asked herself whether she was going to have another baby, poor Lionel should have asked himself to tea.

Lionel is Patience’s brother and something of a hassle. His wife has recently left him to join a retreat, permanently, and he is busying himself with interfering in Patience’s life and her marriage. He’s always quite interfering, but he has particular reason this time: because he’s discovered that Patience’s husband, Edward, is having an affair.

That might be rather a devastating discovery for many wives, but Patience isn’t unduly perturbed. Her relationship with Edward is one of thoughtless acceptance. She has been taught to be submissive and so she lets him sleep with her, and she is proud of the offspring of that marriage, but it seems never to have crossed her mind that one might love one’s husband, or want to spend time with them.

An awful lot of things have never crossed Patience’s mind. Coates has created something rather extraordinary in her – because she is clueless and naive, taking things on surface level, kind to everyone and absolutely predisposed to like them. But she is never, never the butt of the joke in the narrative. Patience would be a slightly absurd comic character in the background of most novels. Here she is a heroine, and I loved her. She is fundamentally good, even if the way she understands the world and its morals is a mixture of pragmatic, idiosyncratic, and Catholic.

I’ve buried the lede, but Catholicism is one of the big themes of this very funny novel. Importantly, Coates isn’t mocking Catholicism – I have zero time for novels that mock people’s faith – but he is funny about people who twist scripture and the tenets of the church for their own ends, or who are half-hearted in it. This early sentence amused me, and gives a good sense of Coates’ tone – it’s about why Patience is married to a non-Catholic:

For darling Mummy had been unable to find any eligible Catholics for her daughters, what with the war being on and perhaps not trying very hard.

Because of her firmly-held faith, Patience can’t get a divorce. Even when things get more complicated, as she falls instantly in love with a man called Philip… and that’s just the beginning of the complications that follow.

I have only two qualms about this novel. One is the love-at-first-sight thing. Maybe it does happen sometimes, but it just feels a bit silly in a novel. The other is that Patience thinks a lot more about the church than about God, which is a little at odds with the genuine nature of her faith.

Besides those details, I loved Patience. Coates is really good at putting together this bizarre twist on a moral dilemma, in a novel that could easily have been a miserable tale about unhappy marriage in a different author’s hands. Instead, Coates sustains the humour and lightness of the novel, and keeps the reader – well, this reader at least – fully empathetic with Patience, and really liking her. But then again I never find unworldliness offputting in someone, real or fictional, unless it means that other people have to deal with the mess they leave behind them. And that’s never the case with Patience.

Such an unusual topic for a novel, handled perfectly, and a delight from start to finish.

Others who got Stuck into it:

“The tone of the novel is a deceptively simple one; Patience’s voice is perfectly delightful, childlike whimsy. Despite its few flaws I really thoroughly enjoyed this surprising little novel” – HeavenAli

“While it is, in many ways, quintessentially ‘Persephone’, it is also quite strikingly different, and fills a gap in the Persephone canon that I hadn’t realised was there before.” – Book Snob

“It’s a rare occurrence but sometimes a Perephone title just doesn’t suit me and this was one of those times which was mildly disappointing as it’s the one I’d had the highest expectations for.” – Desperate Reader

The Hopkins Manuscript by R.C. Sherriff

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This isn’t one of my 25 Books in 25 Days – not at the page count the Sherriff weighs in at! – but I wanted to add it to my participation in Jessie’s Persephone Readathon. And I read it a couple of weeks ago – my third Sherriff, but certainly not my last.

The Hopkins Manuscript (1939) isn’t my usual fare, inasmuch as it is science fiction – not a genre I usually rush towards. But I had previously read and loved a couple of his other books published by Persephone, The Fortnight in September and Greengates, and so I was encouraged to pick up my copy of this one. It certainly didn’t disappoint. The premise is that the moon is going to hit the earth – but that really is just the premise for a character study.

There is a short (fake) preface letting us know that this manuscript has been unearthed, centuries after the events of the novel – and apparently almost all vestiges of the UK have long gone. Experts comb the world to find any evidence of what that civilisation might have been like – and this manuscript is by far the longest discovered. It is called the Hopkins manuscript because it was written by one Edgar Hopkins – and he takes over the story once the novel proper starts. This is, I suppose, his diary.

Hopkins is interested in astronomy and part of the Lunar Society – which is where he is first warned that the moon is likely to hit the earth. In a state of shock, but sworn to secrecy, he heads back to his normal life. And that life is quite a lonely one. He lives alone, except for staff and the poultry that he breeds in a mildly obsessive way, and seems to regard everybody else in his small village (Beadle) as a yokel and idiot. He often reflects that none of them would understand the calamity coming, and that he has nobody of sense to talk with. In short, Hopkins is not the most appealing narrator at the start – much as the gentleman at the centre of Greengates is a little obstreperous as things kick off.

To be honest, this first section of the novel could have done with a bit of editing. We know something seismic is going to happen, and it’s important to set up the world that will be disrupted, but I got a bit impatient waiting for the moon to do its thing.

But eventually, of course, it does. By now the world has been told what will happen – or at least the UK, because Hopkins doesn’t really seem to know that the rest of the world exists, at this point. Bunkers have been built, and prayers said. Most charmingly, Hopkins has befriended a small family who live across the valley from him – a Colonel Parker and his young nephew Robin and niece Pat. These are the educated society Hopkins has wanted (though apparently without wandering far to find it), and there are some touching scenes where Hopkins’ paternal side emerges – and where he watches their lights across the valley, taking comfort from it.

But comfort cannot last. The moon arrives. The world is not destroyed, but everything changes – and Hopkins finds himself living a far different life in a semi-ruined Beadle, growing closer to Robin and Pat, but increasingly isolated from everything else.

Sherriff writes the section of the moon’s landing so brilliantly – it is very tense, while still intensely human. The aftermath is similarly well told, and the central section of the novel was definitely the bit I enjoyed most. He draws the new familial relationships beautifully, and Hopkins gradually becomes a much more likeable character – each step and shade of his character changing being done slowly and believably.

But this is not the end. The final section of the novel looks at how different countries start feuding over the moon and its apparent economic qualities – all seen from the distant perspective of Hopkins. Humanity suffers at the hands of nations’ leaders’ greed and nationalism. Published in 1939, it certainly had relevance to the Second World War – but it felt extremely relevant to Brexit and Trump and far-right parties gaining ascendance across Europe today. Some evils only change their form, it seems.

If the other Sherriff novels I’ve read have felt very much about individual groups of people, with only faint links to class or other wider issues, this one is much more a state-of-the-nation type novel. While still, of course, keeping humanity at its core. I daresay the science of what would happen if the moon did start moving is all flawed, but that certainly doesn’t bother me – and doesn’t remotely affect whether or not this is an impactful novel.

I still prefer his other books, perhaps because this one did feel like it could lose 100 pages without any detriment – but this is still wonderful, and I’m keen to see what else Sherriff has written (and fingers crossed that Persephone publish more of it!)

 

The Carlyles at Home by Thea Holme (25 Books in 25 Days: #8)

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Today, I read The Carlyles at Home (1965) by Thea Holme in order to participate with Jessie’s Persephone Readathon. I don’t remember when I picked this one, but I suspect it’s been on my shelves for quite a few years.

I know very little about Thomas Carlyle – or, rather, I knew very little about him. I knew he was a historian, and that was about it. I certainly haven’t read anything by him. Somewhere or other, I had picked up the idea that he didn’t treat his wife Jane very well – but that was something that had become exaggerated in my mind, for whatever reason. According to The Carlyles at Home, Jane had a life that wasn’t noticeably more difficult than that of other Victorian wives in high society (and without much income) – which is not to say those lives weren’t hard, of course. But she was not the ill-treated woman I’d imagined.

Holme’s book is divided thematically, and then organised seemingly at random. There are sections on the Carlyles’ servants, on dress, on an extention they built on top of the house, on the garden. It is all thoroughly researched and told in an engaging, almost conversational manner. I suppose, ultimately, the amount to which you find the book interesting is strongly proportional to the amount to which you find the Carlyles interesting (and, to a lesser degree, the period).

I have to admit that I don’t find them especially interesting, and I don’t have the same fascination for the late 19th century that I do for the early 20th century. So I could certainly appreciate the way in which this was told, particularly when Holme pulls humour out of anecdotes relayed in the Carlyles’ letters (I loved the saga of the young women next door and their annoying piano playing) – but I don’t think I was the ideal audience by any means. If it had been about Virginia and Leonard Woolf, told with the same style and skill with an anecdote, then I’d have found it glorious. So – take that as you will!

One thing I did love was the illustrations which were at the top of each chapter, by Lynton Lamb – including the one at the top of this post.

Persephone Books in the order they were originally published

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Have you ever wanted to see the spread of Persephone’s publications in date order? Well, I have. Not least for when I’m trying to match Persephone Books to empty slots on my Century of Books.

Well, I couldn’t find this information online. I don’t think it’s there. And so I put it together myself!

There are GRAPHS. They are TERRIBLE QUALITY. But INTERESTING NONETHELESS.

Here’s the spread of them – you can see quite the cluster around mid-century, unsurprisingly.

And here they are in the order that Persephone published them – which shows that they’re getting slightly more modern? Maybe? But also I’m surprised by how few are published post-1950.

Where’s my data, huh? First, here are all their books with the publication date (if it’s a collection of short stories that Persephone compiled themselves, I’ve used the date of the last story.)

1: William – an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton 1920
2: Mariana by Monica Dickens 1940
3: Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple 1953
4: Fidelity by Susan Glaspell 1915
5: An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941-43 by Etty Hillesum 1984
6: The Victorian Chaise-longue by Marghanita Laski 1953
7: The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher 1924
8: Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes by Mollie Panter-Downes 1944
9: Few Eggs and No Oranges by Vere Hodgson 1976
10: Good Things in England by Florence White 1932
11: Julian Grenfell by Nicholas Mosley 1976
12: It’s Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty by Judith Viorst 1968
13: Consequences by E M Delafield 1919
14: Farewell Leicester Square by Betty Miller 1941
15: Tell It to a Stranger by Elizabeth Berridge 1947
16: Saplings by Noel Streatfeild 1945
17: Marjory Fleming by Oriel Malet 1946
18: Every Eye by Isobel English 1956
19: They Knew Mr Knight by Dorothy Whipple 1934
20: A Woman’s Place: 1910-75 by Ruth Adam 1975
21: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson 1937
22: Consider the Years by Virginia Graham 1946
23: Reuben Sachs by Amy Levy 1888
24: Family Roundabout by Richmal Crompton 1948
25: The Montana Stories by Katherine Mansfield 1923
26: Brook Evans by Susan Glaspell 1928
27: The Children who Lived in a Barn by Eleanor Graham 1938
28: Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski 1949
29: The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett 1901
30: Kitchen Essays by Agnes Jekyll 1922
31: A House in the Country by Jocelyn Playfair 1944
32: The Carlyles at Home by Thea Holme 1965
33: The Far Cry by Emma Smith 1949
34: Minnie’s Room: The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes by Mollie Panter-Downes 1965
35: Greenery Street by Denis Mackail 1925
36: Lettice Delmer by Susan Miles 1958
37: The Runaway by Elizabeth Anna Hart 1872
38: Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey 1932
39: Manja by Anna Gmeyner 1939
40: The Priory by Dorothy Whipple 1939
41: Hostages to Fortune by Elizabeth Cambridge 1933
42: The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding 1947
43: The Wise Virgins by Leonard Woolf 1914
44: Tea with Mr Rochester by Frances Towers 1949
45: Good Food on the Aga by Ambrose Heath 1933
46: Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd 1946
47: The New House by Lettice Cooper 1936
48: The Casino by Margaret Bonham 1948
49: Bricks and Mortar by Helen Ashton 1932
50: The World that was Ours by Hilda Bernstein 1967
51: Operation Heartbreak by Duff Cooper 1950
52: The Village by Marghanita Laski 1952
53: Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary by Ruby Ferguson 1937
54: They Can’t Ration These by Vicomte de Mauduit 1940
55: Flush by Virginia Woolf 1933
56: They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple 1943
57: The Hopkins Manuscript by RC Sherriff 1939
58: Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson 1947
59: There Were No Windows by Norah Hoult 1944
60: Doreen by Barbara Noble 1946
61: A London Child of the 1870s by Molly Hughes 1934
62: How To Run Your Home Without Help by Kay Smallshaw 1949
63: Princes in the Land by Joanna Cannan 1936
64: The Woman Novelist and Other Stories by Diana Gardner 1946
65: Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson 1937
66: Gardener’s Nightcap by Muriel Stuart 1938
67: The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff 1931
68: The Expendable Man by Dorothy B Hughes 1963
69: Journal by Katherine Mansfield 1927
70: Plats du Jour by Patience Gray 1957
71: The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett 1907
72: House-Bound by Winifred Peck 1942
73: The Young Pretenders by Edith Henrietta Fowler 1895
74: The Closed Door and Other Stories by Dorothy Whipple 1961
75: On the Other Side: Letters to my Children from Germany 1940-46 by Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg 1979
76: The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby 1924
77: Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer 1958
78: A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman 1983
79: Round About a Pound a Week by Maud Pember Reeves 1913
80: The Country Housewife’s Book by Lucy H Yates 1934
81: Miss Buncle’s Book by DE Stevenson 1934
82: Amours de Voyage by Arthur Hugh Clough 1849
83: Making Conversation by Christine Longford 1931
84: A New System of Domestic Cookery by Mrs Rundell 1806
85: High Wages by Dorothy Whipple 1930
86: To Bed with Grand Music by Marghanita Laski 1946
87: Dimanche and Other Stories by Irène Némirovsky 2000
88: Still Missing by Beth Gutcheon 1981
89: The Mystery of Mrs Blencarrow by Mrs Oliphant 1890
90: The Winds of Heaven by Monica Dickens 1955
91: Miss Buncle Married by DE Stevenson 1936
92: Midsummer Night in the Workhouse by Diana Athill 2011
93: The Sack of Bath by Adam Fergusson 1973
94: No Surrender by Constance Maud 1911
95: Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple 1932
96: Dinners for Beginners by Rachel and Margaret Ryan 1934
97: Harriet by Elizabeth Jenkins 1934
98: A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf 1953
99: Patience by John Coates 1953
100: The Persephone Book of Short Stories by 1986
101: Heat Lightning by Helen Hull 1932
102: The Exiles Return by Elisabeth de Waal 2013
103: The Squire by Enid Bagnold 1938
104: The Two Mrs Abbotts by DE Stevenson 1943
105: Diary of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield 1930
106: Into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg 1967
107: Wilfred and Eileen by Jonathan Smith 1976
108: The Happy Tree by Rosalind Murray 1926
109: The Country Life Cookery Book by Ambrose Heath 1937
110: Because of the Lockwoods by Dorothy Whipple 1949
111: London War Notes by Mollie Panter-Downes 1972
112: Vain Shadow by Jane Hervey 1963
113: Greengates by RC Sherriff 1936
114: Gardeners’ Choice by Evelyn Dunbar and Charles Mahoney 1937
115: Maman, What Are We Called Now? by Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar 1945
116: A Lady and Her Husband by Amber Reeves 1914
117: The Godwits Fly by Robin Hyde 1938
118: Every Good Deed and Other Stories by Dorothy Whipple 1946
119: Long Live Great Bardfield by Tirzah Garwood 2012
120: Madame Solario by Gladys Huntington 1956
121: Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane 1895
122: Earth and High Heaven by Gwethalyn Graham 1944
123: Emmeline by Judith Rossner 1980
124: The Journey Home and Other Stories by Malachi Whitaker 1934
125: Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton 1953
126: Despised and Rejected by Rose Allatini 1918
127: Young Anne by Dorothy Whipple 1927
128: Tory Heaven by Marghanita Laski 1948

 

And here they are in order of original publication – from 1806 to 2013 (though the 2013 was a novel that was unpublished many decades earlier).

 

84 84: A New System of Domestic Cookery by Mrs Rundell 1806
82 82: Amours de Voyage by Arthur Hugh Clough 1849
37 37: The Runaway by Elizabeth Anna Hart 1872
23 23: Reuben Sachs by Amy Levy 1888
89 89: The Mystery of Mrs Blencarrow by Mrs Oliphant 1890
73 73: The Young Pretenders by Edith Henrietta Fowler 1895
121 121: Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane 1895
29 29: The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett 1901
71 71: The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett 1907
94 94: No Surrender by Constance Maud 1911
79 79: Round About a Pound a Week by Maud Pember Reeves 1913
43 43: The Wise Virgins by Leonard Woolf 1914
116 116: A Lady and Her Husband by Amber Reeves 1914
4 4: Fidelity by Susan Glaspell 1915
126 126: Despised and Rejected by Rose Allatini 1918
13 13: Consequences by E M Delafield 1919
1 1: William – an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton 1920
30 30: Kitchen Essays by Agnes Jekyll 1922
25 25: The Montana Stories by Katherine Mansfield 1923
7 7: The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher 1924
76 76: The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby 1924
35 35: Greenery Street by Denis Mackail 1925
108 108: The Happy Tree by Rosalind Murray 1926
69 69: Journal by Katherine Mansfield 1927
127 127: Young Anne by Dorothy Whipple 1927
26 26: Brook Evans by Susan Glaspell 1928
85 85: High Wages by Dorothy Whipple 1930
105 105: Diary of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield 1930
67 67: The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff 1931
83 83: Making Conversation by Christine Longford 1931
10 10: Good Things in England by Florence White 1932
38 38: Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey 1932
49 49: Bricks and Mortar by Helen Ashton 1932
95 95: Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple 1932
101 101: Heat Lightning by Helen Hull 1932
41 41: Hostages to Fortune by Elizabeth Cambridge 1933
45 45: Good Food on the Aga by Ambrose Heath 1933
55 55: Flush by Virginia Woolf 1933
19 19: They Knew Mr Knight by Dorothy Whipple 1934
61 61: A London Child of the 1870s by Molly Hughes 1934
80 80: The Country Housewife’s Book by Lucy H Yates 1934
81 81: Miss Buncle’s Book by DE Stevenson 1934
96 96: Dinners for Beginners by Rachel and Margaret Ryan 1934
97 97: Harriet by Elizabeth Jenkins 1934
124 124: The Journey Home and Other Stories by Malachi Whitaker 1934
47 47: The New House by Lettice Cooper 1936
63 63: Princes in the Land by Joanna Cannan 1936
91 91: Miss Buncle Married by DE Stevenson 1936
113 113: Greengates by RC Sherriff 1936
21 21: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson 1937
53 53: Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary by Ruby Ferguson 1937
65 65: Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson 1937
109 109: The Country Life Cookery Book by Ambrose Heath 1937
114 114: Gardeners’ Choice by Evelyn Dunbar and Charles Mahoney 1937
27 27: The Children who Lived in a Barn by Eleanor Graham 1938
66 66: Gardener’s Nightcap by Muriel Stuart 1938
103 103: The Squire by Enid Bagnold 1938
117 117: The Godwits Fly by Robin Hyde 1938
39 39: Manja by Anna Gmeyner 1939
40 40: The Priory by Dorothy Whipple 1939
57 57: The Hopkins Manuscript by RC Sherriff 1939
2 2: Mariana by Monica Dickens 1940
54 54: They Can’t Ration These by Vicomte de Mauduit 1940
14 14: Farewell Leicester Square by Betty Miller 1941
72 72: House-Bound by Winifred Peck 1942
56 56: They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple 1943
104 104: The Two Mrs Abbotts by DE Stevenson 1943
8 8: Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes by Mollie Panter-Downes 1944
31 31: A House in the Country by Jocelyn Playfair 1944
59 59: There Were No Windows by Norah Hoult 1944
122 122: Earth and High Heaven by Gwethalyn Graham 1944
16 16: Saplings by Noel Streatfeild 1945
115 115: Maman, What Are We Called Now? by Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar 1945
17 17: Marjory Fleming by Oriel Malet 1946
22 22: Consider the Years by Virginia Graham 1946
46 46: Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd 1946
60 60: Doreen by Barbara Noble 1946
64 64: The Woman Novelist and Other Stories by Diana Gardner 1946
86 86: To Bed with Grand Music by Marghanita Laski 1946
118 118: Every Good Deed and Other Stories by Dorothy Whipple 1946
15 15: Tell It to a Stranger by Elizabeth Berridge 1947
42 42: The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding 1947
58 58: Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson 1947
24 24: Family Roundabout by Richmal Crompton 1948
48 48: The Casino by Margaret Bonham 1948
128 128: Tory Heaven by Marghanita Laski 1948
28 28: Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski 1949
33 33: The Far Cry by Emma Smith 1949
44 44: Tea with Mr Rochester by Frances Towers 1949
62 62: How To Run Your Home Without Help by Kay Smallshaw 1949
110 110: Because of the Lockwoods by Dorothy Whipple 1949
51 51: Operation Heartbreak by Duff Cooper 1950
52 52: The Village by Marghanita Laski 1952
3 3: Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple 1953
6 6: The Victorian Chaise-longue by Marghanita Laski 1953
98 98: A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf 1953
99 99: Patience by John Coates 1953
125 125: Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton 1953
90 90: The Winds of Heaven by Monica Dickens 1955
18 18: Every Eye by Isobel English 1956
120 120: Madame Solario by Gladys Huntington 1956
70 70: Plats du Jour by Patience Gray 1957
36 36: Lettice Delmer by Susan Miles 1958
77 77: Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer 1958
74 74: The Closed Door and Other Stories by Dorothy Whipple 1961
68 68: The Expendable Man by Dorothy B Hughes 1963
112 112: Vain Shadow by Jane Hervey 1963
32 32: The Carlyles at Home by Thea Holme 1965
34 34: Minnie’s Room: The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes by Mollie Panter-Downes 1965
50 50: The World that was Ours by Hilda Bernstein 1967
106 106: Into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg 1967
12 12: It’s Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty by Judith Viorst 1968
111 111: London War Notes by Mollie Panter-Downes 1972
93 93: The Sack of Bath by Adam Fergusson 1973
20 20: A Woman’s Place: 1910-75 by Ruth Adam 1975
9 9: Few Eggs and No Oranges by Vere Hodgson 1976
11 11: Julian Grenfell by Nicholas Mosley 1976
107 107: Wilfred and Eileen by Jonathan Smith 1976
75 75: On the Other Side: Letters to my Children from Germany 1940-46 by Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg 1979
123 123: Emmeline by Judith Rossner 1980
88 88: Still Missing by Beth Gutcheon 1981
78 78: A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman 1983
5 5: An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941-43 by Etty Hillesum 1984
100 100: The Persephone Book of Short Stories by 1986
87 87: Dimanche and Other Stories by Irène Némirovsky 2000
92 92: Midsummer Night in the Workhouse by Diana Athill 2011
119 119: Long Live Great Bardfield by Tirzah Garwood 2012
102 102: The Exiles Return by Elisabeth de Waal 2013

I hope that was interesting! I found it fun – and it will be a useful resource for me in the future. And maybe you too!

25 Books in 25 Days: #9 Tell It To A Stranger

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When I go to an independent bookshop, I try to always buy a book – to support them. And in 2009 in Woodstock, I bought Tell It To A Stranger (1947/1949) by Elizabeth Berridge. Both those dates are there, as the book selects stories from two collections – but I think it’s chiefly 1947. Now, I read the first half of this earlier in the year, but finished it today (which technically fits my ‘finish 25 books in 25 days’ motto). Look, I was at dinner and the theatre after work today, so I didn’t have much time.

The stories here are often about the effects of war – whether that is loneliness or readjusting to the old life or grief. Berridge draws so sharply, encasing dramatic moments in the everyday lives of ordinary people so subtly that you almost don’t realise until they’re upon you. It’s as though you’re scanning across a pleasant domestic scene and suddenly notice that somebody has a knife in their back.

In a quick review, I can’t summarise each story – and I think that might almost be pointless. Rather, I shall just say that Berridge is a very adept crafter of stories and I heartily recommend the collection, perhaps spacing them out a little. I’ve got a few of her novels on my shelves too, so it’ll be interesting to see if Angus Wilson (who wrote the preface) is right, and she is equally adept at both.

Still Missing by Beth Gutcheon

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During the Persephone Readathon, I chose to read Still Missing by Beth Gutcheon – which is rather an anomaly for Persephone, in that it was published in 1981. AND the author is still alive! I can only think of a couple other Persephone authors in that category. So, why did Persephone Books step so far from their usual territory of interwar literature to a novel about the kidnap of a child?

For that is what Still Missing is about – it was later adapted into the film Without a Trace. And yet it’s worlds away from the sort of book that might be conjured up in your mind. There certainly seems to be a trend in modern crime fiction for depicting the worst possible things that can happen to children or women. Whether the authors are doing that gratuitously or to expose a troubling trend in the real world, they’re not books I want to read. Whereas Still Missing is far more about the psychology of a mother going through this appalling predicament, day by day by day.

That is the power of the novel. Nothing is rushed. We agonise alongside Susan, feeling as though we are deep in her mind, even though the novel is in the third person. As for her son, Alex, all we see is him leaving for school – and not getting there. He disappears from the novel as suddenly as he disappears from the neighbourhood.

It may be that one loss helps to prepare you for the next, at least in developing a certain rueful sense of humour about things you’re too old to cry about. There’s plenty of blather, some of it true, about turning pain into growth, using one blow to teach you resilience and to make you ready for the shock of the next one. But the greater truth is that life is not something you can go into training for. There was nothing in life that Susan Selky could have done to prepare for the breathtaking impact of losing her son.

I don’t know what would actually happen when a young boy goes missing, nor (more to the point) what would have happened in 1981 – but I’m willing to believe it would be rather what Gutcheon depicts. There is the initial flurry of media interest and police action – questioning her estranged husband, getting statements from everybody in the area, putting everybody at their disposal. Her friends are either too horrified to talk to her, too awkward to know how to help, or (a select few) an essential support. Gutcheon shows people’s reactions perfectly, and dryly explains how and why people react as they do.

“Are you sure there’s nothing… funny about her?” his wife asked.

“What do you mean?”

“She was so cool,” said Pat. Uh-huh, though Menetti. Now it starts. It can’t happen to me. It happened to her, she lost her kid, but if there’s something funny about her, then there’s a reason it could happen to her but it couldn’t happen to me. Now starts the drawing away, the pulling aside, the setting the Selkys apart.

Chief among the policemen is Menetti, in that conversation above. One of the reasons the novel is in the third person (I suspect) is so that we can jump into Menetti’s mind instead – he is an intensely sympathetic character, trying to help Susan as much as possible while also maintaining procedure. She begs him not to waste time following the lead of her ex-husband – she is adamant that it has nothing to do with him – but Menetti must follow the (fruitless) most likely option. And we see him when he goes home too, anxious and resigned, the impact on his own family life all too unavoidable.

Still Missing is very gripping, but not because it is full of event. It is full of tension, but it is mostly the tension of nothing happening – of friends and journalists gradually losing interest; of the leads drying up. And of Susan’s agony remaining just as painful and stark throughout – of her own measures to find Alex growing increasingly desperate. Gutcheon judges the pacing brilliantly almost all the time – I say ‘almost’ because there are a few clunky bits, thrown in for plot and red herrings, that don’t sit well with the rhythm of the rest of the narrative.

I’m still not sure it quite fits as a Persephone, and the 1980s still lies between nostalgia and modern in a slightly off-colour, dated interim state – but it’s certainly an involving and beautifully judged read. The premise has become worn through re-use, but Gutcheon takes it back to essentials, and the novel is the more powerful and personal because of it.

The Priory by Dorothy Whipple

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It’s turning out to be all Whipple all the time on Stuck in a Book right now. Well, long before I started Random Commentary, I was already reading the monster that is The Priory (1939). It’s enormous. My copy is 528 pages – I basically never read books that are over 500 pages, and that’s why I’ve had my copy for nearly 14 years (gasp, how did time pass that quickly?)

I bought it just before I started university, while on a trip to the Bookbarn to buy books for my course. This was, ahem, not for my course – but I couldn’t resist. And it was only when I got home that I discovered that my copy was… signed by Dorothy Whipple!

Obviously my copy is much older than the Persephone edition – which I do also have, as I can’t bring myself to get rid of either copy. And it starts like this…

It was almost dark. Cars, weaving like shuttles on the high road between two towns fifteen miles apart, had their lights on. Every few moments, the gates of Saunby Priory were illuminated. Every few moments, to left or to right, the winter dusk was pierced by needle points of light which, rushing swiftly into brilliance, summoned the old gateway like an apparition from the night and, passing, dispelled it.

The gates were from time to time illuminated, but the Priory, set more than a mile behind them, was still dark. To the stranger it would have appeared deserted. It stood in dark bulk, with a cold glitter of water beside it, a cold glitter of glass window when clouds moved in the sky. The West Front of the Priory, built in the thirteenth century for the service of God and the poor, towered above the house that had been raised alongside from its ruins, from its very stones. And because no light showed from any window here, the stranger, visiting Saunby at this hour, would have concluded that the house was empty.

But he would have been wrong. There were many people within.

So – what’s The Priory about? The house in question is called Saunby Priory, and is the vast home belonging to the Marwood family. There is grumpy widower Major Marwood, who lives only for the cricket season – which he throws large sums of money at, while the rest of the year he is a fierce penny pincher. There are his daughters Christine and Penelope, still in the nursery though now newly grown up. And there is a handful of servants who occasionally war with each other and occasionally sleep with each other (in a tactful 1930s way, of course).

Curiously, the Priory never felt very big to me. After that introduction, the scenes inside the house are rather claustrophobic – people worrying about space, getting in each other’s way, or being moved to make room for others. I wonder how deliberate that was.

There are a series of stages, where the entrance of a new character into the scene changes things – the first being the shy, anxious woman who will become Major Marwood’s new wife: Anthea. She is old enough that she believed she would always be a spinster, and is keen to accept his fairly ungracious proposal – which he makes by phone, because he doesn’t want the bother of going around to her in case she says no. There are also men who enter stage left to woo the girls; there is a passage of time in London. It is all very involved, and spaced evenly throughout the hundreds of pages – like an ongoing soap opera of events, neatly paced and always meeting the anticipated dose of emotion. There is also humour, particularly at the beginning, though the tone of the novel grows a little more melodramatic as the pages go by.

The Priory doesn’t have the psychological nuance of some of Whipple’s other novels. (That’s my view anyway – see review links at the bottom for different opinions!) Because her tapestry of events is so protracted, and must be filled, each one gets its moments of alarm and pathos, and everybody reacts in heightened dialogue before neatly moving onto the next moment. For instance, Anthea moves from being a timid new bride to ruthlessly running the household for the protection of her new babies, but settles into the new role so comfortably that it doesn’t feel as though a psychological shift has taken place so much as a new set of characteristics has been introduced. The same is true for the daughters as they experience marriage, parenthood, and adult woes.

Which is not to say that what is here isn’t a joy to read. It is – I moved through the novel very happily, enjoying every page for the entertaining soap opera that it was. I suppose my only point is that Whipple can do better, in terms of insight and depth – but not every novel needs to be insightful and deep. Some can just be engagingly written and immersively enjoyable – indeed, that is no mean feat. Yes, it could have been 200pp shorter without losing very much – I’d have advised staying in the Priory and not wandering off around the country – but I can’t disagree with the tribute that E.M. Delafield gave the novel in The Provincial Lady in Wartime:

What, I enquire in order to gain time, does Mrs. Peacock like in the way of books?

In times such as these, she replies very apologetically indeed, she thinks a novel is practically the only thing. Not a detective novel, not a novel about politics, nor about the unemployed, nothing to do with sex, and above all not a novel about life under Nazi régime in Germany.

Inspiration immediately descends upon me and I tell her without hesitation to read a delightful novel called The Priory by Dorothy Whipple, which answers all requirements, and has a happy ending into the bargain.

Mrs. Peacock says it seems too good to be true, and she can hardly believe that any modern novel is as nice as all that, but I assure her that it is and that it is many years since I have enjoyed anything so much.

 

Others who got Stuck into it:

“The best thing about this book is the characters. Whipple develops them so skillfully, and I loved how she did it by showing the reader through their words, thoughts, and actions, not just telling us.” – Books and Chocolate

“It is a beautiful novel, worthy of the highest praise and Whipple is an author, whose writing I look forward to reading more of, in the near future.” – Bag Full of Books

“Not a lot “happens” in this novel; most of the action centers around emotion. It’s all about subtlety here.” – A Girl Walks into a Bookstore

There is also an enjoyable write-up in the Persephone Forum.

 

I decided to rank all the Persephones (…that I’ve read)

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I love ranking things. Ever since I was young, I’ve liked making lists of favourite-to-least-favourite (or, mixing it up, least-favourite-to-favourite). That’s why my end-of-year Best Books list are always in order. It feels incomplete otherwise. And so, with the Persephone Readathon happening, I thought I’d rank all the Persephone Books I’ve read. (Not including the two I’m currently reading.) 1 = least favourite; 57 = most favourite. Each comes with a very inadequate one-sentence thought about it.

A few caveats – I love Persephone, so even things towards the bottom of the list are v good reads. Anything from about #10 onwards I would heartily recommend. And I’ve put titles in bold if I read them before they became Persephones – which turned out to be rather interesting…

Do you have any violent disagreements with my list? Any unread Persephones I need to get to asap?

 

1. It’s Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty by Judith Viorst

The only Persephone I really, really dislike. Tedious, annoying, and bad poetry too.

2. Princes in the Land by Joanna Cannan

I found the main woman very unsympathetic, and I don’t think we were meant to…

3. Reuben Sachs by Amy Levy

I don’t remember much at all about this, except I wasn’t bowled over.

4. Making Conversation by Christine Longford

This was fine, but seemed much less engaging than many novels Persephone have turned down.

5. The Happy Tree by Rosalind Murray

As above!

6. Midsummer Night in the Workhouse by Diana Athill

Don’t remember much about these, except that Athill writes better non-fic.

7. The Closed Door and other stories by Dorothy Whipple

This was one very good story told over and over and over again…

8. Saplings by Noel Streatfeild

The tone felt a bit all over the place, but engaging nonetheless.

9. Consider the Years by Virginia Graham

I enjoyed this, but Graham’s humorous Say Please and Here’s How are worlds better.

10. Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson

Only so low because I don’t remember anything at all about it!

11. The Sack of Bath by Adam Fergusson

A fascinating look at how Bath was drastically altered by bad planning decisions. (See, I already love books this low down the list!)

12. Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson

A favourite for many, but I found the writing a little sub-par at times.

13. Fidelity by Susan Glaspell

I seem to remember a great scene with sheep?

14. Minnie’s Room by Mollie Panter-Downes

Poignant and well-written short stories, but I like MPD best at full-length.

15. Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski

This tale of a lost child has somehow almost totally gone from my mind.

16. High Wages by Dorothy Whipple

Love the shop stuff, but feels more lightweight than other Whipple novels.

17. Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary by Ruby Ferguson

The twist was a bit too heavily signposted, but an entertaining tale.

18. The Winds of Heaven by Monica Dickens

Dickens in serious mode is great (though not as good as One Pair of Hands!)

19. Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple

I read this eons ago and remember nothing about it.

20. William – an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton

The first Persephone, and a shocking, raw novel about war. So much for ‘cosy’ books.

21. There Were No Windows by Norah Hoult

A novel about dementia, sensitively told.

22. The Children Who Lived in a Barn by Eleanor Graham

A classic children’s tale of being accidentally abandoned – what’s not to like?

23. Doreen by Barbara Noble

A brilliant perspective on evacuation in wartime, and competing parent figures.

24. The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Everybody loves a Cinderella story, right?

25. Lettice Delmer by Susan Miles

Who knew a verse novel could be so good? And theologically interesting, no less.

26. The Wise Virgins by Leonard Woolf

I don’t remember a lot about this, but it’s good to have an illustration of Virginia Woolf’s life.

27. Tea With Mr Rochester by Frances Towers

Some lovely stories with heavy literary influence.

28. Journal by Katherine Mansfield

One of my favourite writers, but her journal is a bit all over the place.

29. The New House by Lettice Cooper

This feels like the quintessential 1930s domestic novel. It’s great.

30. To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski

An amusing gender-reversed Casanova tale of a woman finding adulterous lovers in wartime.

31. A House in the Country by Jocelyn Playfair

A much less ‘domestic-style’ novel than you’d expect – biting and extremely well told.

32. On the Other Side by Mathilde Wolff-Monckeberg

This non-fic account of being an anti-Nazi German in Nazi Germany shines an important light on WW2.

33. The Priory by Dorothy Whipple

This is wildly too long, but an engaging domestic drama.

34. The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay-Holding

A tense sort-of-thriller, and a great character study.

35. The Victorian Chaise-Longue by Marghanita Laski

A short and fascinating time travel novel – pacy and quite moving.

36. Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson

I love Ferguson’s quirky novels, but she’s also great in (slightly) more traditional mode.

37. They Knew Mr Knight by Dorothy Whipple

A powerful novel about an interloper ruining a family – including a good depiction of faith.

38. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson

Who doesn’t love this frothy Cinderella tale? We all love it.

39. Bricks and Mortar by Helen Ashton

Such an engaging, enjoyable novel about architecture and family.

40. The Village by Marghanita Laski

There are a zillion novels about class relations in 1940s villages, and this is the Platonic ideal.

41. The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Still very ahead of its time in showing a house-husband (and was ahead of its time in showing a working mother).

42. The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff

I was late to the Sherriff party, but his beautifully ordinary novels are exceptional.

43. Flush by Virginia Woolf

I’m putting this high up because it’s Queen Virginia, but it’s probably her least interesting novel, and definitely didn’t need rescuing.

44. Consequences by E.M. Delafield

One of my first Persephone reads – dark and brilliant, like much EMD.

45. Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey

Divides people, but I found this odd, short novel extremely funny.

46. Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd

Shipwrecked woman returns to England during WW2 – a fantastic way of giving an unusual perspective on wartime.

47. Greengates by R.C. Sherriff

Same as the previous Sherriff, but with extra love because it’s also about houses.

48. Greenery Street by Denis Mackail

A funny, happy novel about marriage – rare and lovely.

49. The Runaway by Elizabeth Anna Hart

A fun children’s novel, so high up because Gwen Raverat’s woodcuts are so wonderful.

50. A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman

A groundbreaking work on middlebrow fiction that is basically a guide to the world of Persephone, written a decade before it started.

51. Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple

I’m pretty sure everybody agrees this is Whipple’s best novel. A well-told story of a butterfly effect.

52. London War Notes by Mollie Panter-Downes

MPD’s fortnightly columns about war give a fascinating overview of the experience, as it happened.

53. A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf

A masterpiece of editing, giving Woolf’s astonishing insights into being The Best Writer of the 20th Century (TM).

54. Hostages to Fortune by Elizabeth Cambridge

This, it turns out, is my favourite Persephone book that I didn’t know before it was a Persephone. A wonderful novel about being a wife and mother in Oxfordshire countryside.

55. Family Roundabout by Richmal Crompton

Totally compelling, and with RC’s greatest characters in the two covertly warring matriarchs.

56. Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton

Hilarious, warm, delightful – and also a little dark. So thrilled this is now a Persephone.

57. Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield

I still don’t think this should have been a Persephone, when there are so many out of print Delafield novels to be discovered – but it has to go at the top because it might well be my favourite novel. How could it not?

I’d love it if other people wanted to go crazy and rank all the Persephones they’ve read. And I’d love your thoughts on my list!