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I don't change much. My five favorite books have remained the same for most of my adult life. The reading of classic English Literature has had a profound effect on me. I have traveled to England and visited all five of these author's historical sites.
1. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
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| 1st edition |
The original title was The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery
The first lines of the book are:
""Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."
The image to the left is the cover of the first serial edition in 1879.
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| My paperback copy |
I went on to read Nicholas Nickleby, Dombey and Son, A Tale of Two Cities, Hard Times, Bleak House and Great Expectations.
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| Charles Dickens |
In reading biographies of Charles Dickens - alas- he was a disappointing character.I was crestfallen. But a genius, no question.
The first chapter of Bleak House is truly the most astonishing read and the brilliance of it makes you fall down in your chair.
Reading Dickens changed the lights for me - and helped me respect the greatness of English literature at its best.
2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
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| 1st U.S. edition |
A first U.S. edition, Part One, of Wuthering Heights was sold for $10,000 in 1998. It was published by Harper & Brothers in 1848.
The tragedy is that Emily Brontë died that same year, at age 30. All her siblings died at a young age, too. Contamination to the village water supply from the overcrowded graveyard nearby contributed to their deaths.
Famous Quotes from Wuthering Heights include:
“I have not broken your heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine."
“My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary.”
"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."
Emily Brontë used the pseudonym Ellis Bell (along with her sisters Charlotte as Currer Bell and Anne as Acton Bell). This was because Victorian society was biased against female authors.
I have read all the Bronte novels. This includes Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, and The Professor, written by Charlotte and Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall written by Anne.
The painting is of Anne, Emily and Charlotte Bronte (from left to right).
3. Persuasion by Jane Austen
Today happens to be Jane Austen's 250th birthday! She was born on the16th of December in 1775, which was known as the Regency period. She was born in Steventon, Hampshire, England. How our world has changed! It is hard to wrap one's head around that this witty woman -
1. Had no electricity - She relied on natural light during the day and candle light or firelight by night.
2. Had no indoor plumbing - all households used outdoor privies, chamber pots and wash basins.
3. Wrote with quill pens - goose feathers dipped in ink from an inkwell. The feathers needed frequent trimming for shaping the nib.
It is hard to believe that anyone even lived to adulthood! The germ theory would not be discovered for approximately 75 more years. Antibiotics were unheard of. Medicine consisted of herbal remedies, bloodletting, laxatives and opium-based painkillers. Surgery was to be avoided at all costs. There was no sterilization of instruments and anesthesia did not occur until three decades after her death.
Photography was unheard of. All we have are oil paintings to rely on.
One of the first things I learned about Jane was that she wrote on a little desk and then covered her work so no one would know. Also, it is surmised that if Jane had married we would not have her books, as she would have been preoccupied with household duties and motherhood.
Jane wrote most of her work in her twenties but nothing was published until she was about 35. Like many women authors at the time, Austen published her books anonymously. Persuasion was published posthumously in 1818—
My Favorite Quotes from Persuasion:
“All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone!”
“Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”
"How quick come the reasons for approving what we like."
I have read all of Jane Austen's novels.
Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without affection".
Jane Austen
Jane Austen died when she was 41 years old.
4. Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy
The opening of Under the Greenwood Tree starts as such:
MELLSTOCK-LANE
"To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall. And winter, which modifies the note of such trees as shed their leaves, does not destroy its individuality."
Thomas Hardy would know how a dweller in a wood would recognize the voice of different species of trees. He was born and grew up in Upper Bockhampton - a dwelling in a wood near Dorchester, England. The year was 1840.
My favorite author is Thomas Hardy. His body of work is massive, to the point of wondering if anyone has read it all. I have read eight of his 14 novels.
I also have read many of his poems and short stories.
Novels of Thomas Hardy include:
- Desperate Remedies: (1871)
- Under the Greenwood Tree: (1872)
- A Pair of Blue Eyes: (1873)
- Far from the Madding Crowd: (1874)
- The Hand of Ethelberta: (1876)
- The Return of the Native: (1878)
- The Trumpet-Major: (1880)
- A Laodicean: (1881)
- Two on a Tower: (1882)
- The Mayor of Casterbridge: (1886)
- The Woodlanders: (1887)
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles: (1891)
- The Well-Beloved: (1892)
- Jude the Obscure: (1895) "Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed." Thomas Hardy
5. A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
Quotes from A Room of One's Own:
“It is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in time to it along the road.”
“Truth had run through my fingers. Every drop had escaped.”
“Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them; it is for you to seek out this truth and to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping.”
It is remarkable…what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about.”
"That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library.”
"Literature is impoverished beyond our counting by the doors that have been shut upon women.”
"The thought swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it, until - you know the little tug - the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out?"
A Room of One's Own was actually several lectures that Virginia gave to a girl's college.
It is one of those books that can be enjoyed every time it is read.
It is Virginia explaining why a writer needs a room and a way to have the time needed to create their work. Then she explains how women not having the advantages of that time and room has affected our literature.
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