Three Free Books: Overlooked Women

Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 Dorothy Wordsworth (1771–1855) - The neglected sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth was a well-educated writer and poet who kept journals of her travels. These were unpublished until after her death, but give insight into her walks with her brother and her keen interest in the natural world.

Dorothy Wordsworth

The Works of Aphra Behn Aphra Behn (1640–1689) - Aphra Behn's plays were criticized during her lifetime because what she wrote wasn't considered proper for a woman in 17th century England (her homoerotic themes may have had something to do with that). This didn't keep her from maintaining herself on her writing after her husband's death. That, and of course the spying she did for the ill-fated monarch Charles II (though he failed to pay her and she landed in debtor's prison after her service). Behn is best known today for her short novel Oroonoko, about an enslaved African prince who gains his freedom. The story is a precursor to Rousseau's idea of the "noble savage," but is actually one of the first English novels to positively depict an African protagonist. There are plenty of good reasons to check out Behn's plays, poetry, and novel.

Aphra Behn

Letters of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu Lady Mary Wortley Montagu ( 1689–1762) - Lady Montagu was an aristocrat most famous for her marvelous and witty "Turkish Embassy Letters" (that's this collection), though she also stood toe-to-toe with the poets of her day and wrote satirical attacks on Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope (the latter of whom she accused of plagiarizing her verses). The lady had some serious mental muscle. She was also a bit of a snob and estranged most of her friends before her death. But she was self-taught, being denied the classical education of contemporary males, and her letters are worth reading for a look into the lives of aristocrats of her era, as well as for remembering a great writer and poet.

Lady Montagu

Three Free Books

The Book of Snobs by William Makepeace Thackeray
This is a collection of weekly columns for Punch, written in 1848. Thackeray takes on the social issues of his day in these satirical pieces, looking at every class of snob. One of my favorite books is Vanity Fair, and I think you could see the themes of skewering the self-important there, too. (Seriously, I heart Becky Sharp.) Some of the references he's making are obviously based on his own day's gossip and news, so an acquaintance with Victorian England would serve a reader well.

No Name by Wilkie Collins
Two young women are suddenly orphaned, disinherited, and driven from their home. Forced to make their way alone, one sister opts for the hardships of a governess' life and the other for revenge - her only weapons her beauty and wits. Collins wrote some of the first-ever detective novels, and I have high hopes for his Victorian revenge novel starring wronged women making tough moral choices. It was considered immoral in its time - but then again, so was holding hands before marriage.

The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
This is the account of Robert Falcon Scott's expedition to the South Pole, as told by one of only three men who survived the journey. (The perfect companion to Francis Spufford's I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination.) Cherry-Garrard uses excerpts from his diary to puzzle out the reasons for the failure and joins the search party to recover his companions' bodies.

Three Free Books

Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments by Edmund Gosse (1907)
This is one of the books Nick Hornby writes about in The Polysyllabic Spree. This book is the story of Gosse's relationship with his marine biologist father, who was also a member of the Plymouth Brethren. Hornby writes that his "fierce, joyless evangelism crippled his son's childhood." Why am I so interested? I read Claire Tomalin's lovely biography of Jane Austen on Hornby's recommendation, and I hope he won't steer me wrong this time!

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (1855)
I read Gaskell in college, and recently watched a BBC adaptation that reminded me how romantic this book is. I recently did a booktalk on this novel, and the best way to describe Gaskell is this: she is Jane Austen with a social conscience, like Charles Dickens without the rambling. Plot: A genteel country woman is uprooted to a grimy industrial town, completely alien to everything she knows and loves. Her ideals of what it means to be a good neighbor clash with the ideals of a local factory owner, Mr. Thornton, a self-made man who is her equal intellectually but not socially. If you love Austen, the Brontës, and Dickens--or pretty much any great Victorian author--do yourself a favor and try Gaskell.

A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Bird (1879)
Isabella L. Bird was a well-known Victorian travel writer, and this book is probably the best-known of her works. I came across a description of this particular book in Barbara Hodgson's No Place for a Lady, a book about fearless female travelers. Bird was a woman who couldn't stay at home, and so of course I put this on my list!

Three Free Books

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927)
I came across the name of this comic novel in Connie Willis' fantastic time-travel novel To Say Nothing of the Dog. The hero of that novel undergoes a Victorian trip up a river (with said dog), and is constantly reminded of Jerome K. Jerome's three men. I love British humor--and funny novels in general--so I've added it to my list for one of those days when I just need a boost.

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950)
John Carter is a Civil War veteran who finds himself mysteriously transported to Mars, where he is held captive by Green Men, meets a gorgeous alien princess, and fights a battle to save Barsoom. (Barsoom is the native name for Mars.) You may or may not remember the giant flop that was Disney's John Carter. Well, that was based on this series of eleven enormously popular science fantasy novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs (the man who brought us Tarzan of the Apes, also coincidentally a Disney film).

The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce (1842-?)
Journalist and short-story writer Ambrose Bierce's acerbic wit is legendary, and you've probably heard many of the cynical definitions in his Dictionary without realizing where they came from--he's often quoted without proper attribution. The definitions were initially published a feature in a newspaper in 1881 and were later collected in a book. Here's a sampling:

LOVE, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. [...] It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.

PATIENCE, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

SELFISH, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.

I could continue, but you should really just get the book for free at Gutenberg. Just be warned: he wasn't called Bitter Bierce for nothing!

Books aside, Bierce himself is an interesting historical figure. For one thing, he looked like this around 1866:


(I'm digging the mustache.Short bio and bibliography here.)

For another, you might have noticed the question mark for his date of death. Some people put it around 1913 or 1914, when at the age of 71 he was in Mexico to observe the Mexican Revolution (led by Pancho Villa) and vanished without a trace.

So you have a cynical, acid-tongued journalist who at the age of 71, controversial in his day, who vanished under mysterious circumstances. Intriguing. His disappearance is one of the great unsolved historical mysteries, and we may never know what really happened to Bitter Bierce.

Homage to Hornby: Books Bought, Books Read

Lately I've been reading Nick Hornby's collected essays from his Believer column (Housekeeping vs. the Dirt, The Polysyllabic Spree, and More Baths, Less Talking. The format goes like this: at the beginning of each essay, he lists the books he's purchased and the books he's read for that month. Like most bibliophiles, those two lists rarely match up.

While I'm still experimenting with the best way to structure this blog, I'm going to steal a page from Hornby's amusing and smart books and present you with my lists (the links will take you to the Goodreads profile or to my reviews):

Books bought in February:
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis (Nook)
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge (Zones of Thought #2)
The Children of the Sky by Vernor Vinge (Zones of Thought #3)
The Fiction Writer's Handbook by Shelly Lowenkopf (Nook)
Zig Zag: The Incredible Wartime Exploits Of Double Agent Eddie Chapman by Nicholas Booth
Hunk for the Holidays by Katie Lane (Nook: don't judge - he has whiskey-colored eyes! I love whiskey!)
A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana by Haven Kimmel
Black Sheep by Georgette Heyer
Frederica by Georgette Heyer
The Convenient Marriage by Georgette Heyer
A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer
Revenge: A Story of Hope by Laura Blumenfeld
Pulphead: Essays by John Jeremiah Sullivan
I May Be Some Time: Ice and the English Imagination by Francis Spufford

I swear I don't normally buy so many books in a month...you should see my library hold list for an indication of my more frugal self. This list is the result of some late-night buying at Powells.com, where it's all so cheap, and shipping was only $4 for everything from Zippy down!

Books read in February:
Jane Austen: A Life by Clair Tomalin
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett (Discworld series; re-read)
The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine
Nonfiction Readers' Advisory ed. Robert Burgin
A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge (Zones of Thought #1)
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (audiobook)

In progress:
The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne Valente
A Few Good Books: Using Contemporary Readers' Advisory Strategies to Connect Readers With Books by Stephanie L. Maatta

The one wrinkle I'll add is that I downloaded a HUGE number of books from the fantastic Project Gutenberg this month--far too many to list in one entry, or even ten.

So instead I'll give you a teaser of the obscure (and not so obscure!) classics that I'm excited to read about, and the reasons for my enthusiasm (links will take you to free copies via Project Gutenberg):

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy (1905)
A swashbuckling adventure story along the lines of The Three Musketeers, this is the story of a Frenchwoman named Marguerite who marries a handsome fop, Sir Percy Blakeney, at the start of the French Revolution. Their love is meant to be, but a terrible misunderstanding estranges them as the Terror begins in France, where a mysterious hero who calls himself the Scarlet Pimpernel is smuggling French aristocrats out of the country.

For movie fans, the 1934 adaptation starring Leslie Howard will make you forget all about the limp Ashley Wilkes (Gone With the Wind). Not to get sidetracked or anything, but the actor Leslie Howard died in 1943 when his plane was shot down by Nazis. He may have been acting for British Intelligence at the time, though the official story is that he was doing anti-Nazi propaganda. So Howard was a bona fide spy, playing a fictional spy! He was a talented actor whose life was tragically cut short, and the rest of his filmography is worth checking out, too.

I'll stop here for now, but there are so many fantastic books available for FREE through Gutenberg that I'm sure you'll be hearing more from me on the subject in posts tagged Three Free Books.

Three Free Books

The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer (1902-1974)
This writer started a whole new genre--Regency romance--hit a home run her very first time at the plate. Here is her description of the wicked, fascinating, and impeccably dressed Duke of Andover, who is attempting to seduce a young woman:

"He walked coolly forward into the full light of a great pendant chandelier, standing directly beneath it, the diamond order on his breast burning and winking like a living thing. The diamonds in his cravat and on his fingers glittered every time he moved, until he seemed to be carelessly powdered with iridescent gems. As usual, he was clad in black, but it would have been difficult to find any other dress in the room more sumptuous or more magnificent than his sable satin with its heavy silver lacing, and shimmering waistcoat. Silver lace adorned his throat and fell in deep ruffles over his hands, and in defiance of Fashion, which decreed that black along should be worn to tie the hair, he displayed long silver ribands, very striking against his unpowdered head."

Sadly, we have to wait a few more years for any of her other works to fall into the public domain. This gem of a book was the first Heyer I read, and it's every bit as thrilling and romantic as you could wish!

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1797-1851)
Anyone who has only seen a movie version of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster probably doesn't know that the original is slightly more philosophical than the groans and screams of the many adaptations. Its alternate title is "The Modern Prometheus." The Goodreads summary does a good job here:

"Frankenstein, an instant bestseller and an important ancestor of both the horror and science fiction genres, not only tells a terrifying story, but also raises profound, disturbing questions about the very nature of life and the place of humankind within the cosmos: What does it mean to be human? What responsibilities do we have to each other? How far can we go in tampering with Nature? In our age, filled with news of organ donation genetic engineering, and bio-terrorism, these questions are more relevant than ever."

All this philosophizing doesn't make the story of monstrous hubris any less sinister than it was when it first came out in 1818.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (1820-1849)
The youngest and least-known of the famous Brontë sisters, Anne wrote two novels: this one and Agnes Grey (a governess story!) Goodreads says that her writing is sharper and more ironic than the romantic style of Charlotte and Emily. The lesser known female novelists of the Victorian era are hidden gems, and I look forward to reading the last Brontë's works.

(So I gave you more than three this time. Bonus: here are Anne, Emily, and Charlotte Brontë's tiny but wonderful oeuvres in Project Gutenberg. Enjoy!)