Aisfor

E is for Essex

StuckinaBook All 18 Comments

This is part of an ongoing series where I write about a different author for each letter of the alphabet. You can see them all here.

There are going to be a handful of letters in this series that aren’t that easy. None of us are looking forward to X. But I didn’t have to think too hard to come up with my E – even if the author is really a B. Step forward Mary Essex, pseudonym of the extremely prolific author Ursula Bloom.

How many books do I have by Mary Essex?

I have five, as you can see – not up there with the Crompton and Delafield numbers. I do also have a couple under the name Ursula Bloom, but I haven’t read either of them. From the research I’ve done, Bloom seemed to write quite differently under different names – she had about five pseudonyms – so I’ll treat the Essex novels as a class unto themselves. It’s hard to find an exact number of books she wrote but it’s definitely in the hundreds – of which more than 50 are under the name Mary Essex.

How many of these have I read?

Four – from the above set, I haven’t read The Herring’s Nest.

How did I start reading Essex?

I think it was 2002 and I was in Oxford, a couple of years before I moved there. I mosied into a charity shop (that is now an HQ for a bus company) and was drawn to the title Tea Is So Intoxicating. As who would not be?

This was back in the days when I used to read books shortly after I bought them – hollow laugh – so I read it in late 2002. I remember that I read it immediately after Moby Dick, and for years I wondered if I only liked it because it wasn’t Moby Dick. But when I finally tried some more of her work, I really liked it.

General impressions…

Mary Essex certainly isn’t the most highbrow reading in the world, but nor is it anywhere near as trashy as you’d expect from an author who seemed to write a book every five minutes. Later in her career, the Mary Essex novels seem to be lean more towards romance, especially medical romance – but in the 40s and some of the 50s, they followed less of a predictable pattern.

Yes, she overuses exclamation marks – but the characters are thoughtfully drawn and the books are often very funny, especially The Amorous Bicycle. Yep, she had a way with a title.

I’m really pleased that Tea Is So Intoxicating is coming out from the British Library Women Writers series next month, so more people can enjoy her. It’s definitely towards the lighter end of what the series has published, but we can all do with some of that sometimes, can’t we?

D is for Delafield

StuckinaBook All , 23 Comments

This is part of an ongoing series where I write about a different author for each letter of the alphabet. You can see them all here.

If you were guessing which author I’d be using for D in this series, you’d probably have put money on Delafield. Diary of a Provincial Lady is one of my favourite books and among the few I’ve re-read several times. But there is much more to Delafield than that series, as this post will show!

How many books do I have by EM Delafield?

In this picture, I forgot to include the Persephone Delafields and a couple of the Viragos, and I have lent one of her books elsewhere, but you can see that I have quite a few! Though this pic is a bit misleading. Because the pile on the left is entirely duplicates of the Provincial Lady series. It’s my one weakness when it comes to duplicates. So, all told I have 38 books by E.M. Delafield, eleven of which are the Provincial Lady series. So a total of 31 really. (NOTE: The Provincial Lady in Russia is not in that pile because it’s not a proper PL book – it’s an opportunistic retitling of Straw Without Bricks: I Visit Soviet Russia.)

How many of these have I read?

The pile on the right are the ones I’ve not read, but I have read a few Delafields that I don’t own – so the total I’ve read is 25. And there are a handful of her books I haven’t managed to track down.

How did I start reading Delafield?

Most people come to her through Diary of a Provincial Lady, but I first encountered her in a little book called Modern Humour, which I’d bought because it featured a sketch by A.A. Milne. At this point – maybe 2002? – I knew very little about authors at all, and so was reading it rather blind. And I knew nothing about E.M. Delafield when I read the two sketches featured – which turned out to be from the very excellent As Others Hear Us.

My local library had a good store of old Delafields, but the first one I read was from the open shelves – a large print edition of The Provincial Lady Goes Further – also know as The Provincial Lady in London. It might not be the traditional route to her, to read the second in a series in an enormous font, but it got me hooked and I haven’t looked back.

General impressions…

Delafield is one of those authors who really helped shape my literary taste, coming across her as a teenager and finding there was a lot to explore. And I love her just as much now – when I’ve lived twice as long. I think I’ll be reading her for the rest of my life.

She is so good at being funny – we all know that. She’s also exceptionally good at more melancholy and poignant books. Novels like Faster! Faster! and The Way Things Are can shine a light on contemporary social anxieties. I think she’s at her best when she’s using her observational skills for comedy – not just the Provincial Lady, but the sketches in As Others Hear Us and, appropriately for this section of the post, General Impressions.

And, as with A.A. Milne and Richmal Crompton, it was fun to get addicted to an author whose books take a bit of tracking down. As with last time, I started collecting when they were a bit easier to find online at an affordable price – but it still took a bit of hunting, and more satisfaction for the book hunter than if I could just have bought everything straight off the shelf of Waterstones.

And I’m rather hoping she can be included in the British Library Women Writers series… watch this space.

 

C is for Crompton

StuckinaBook All 19 Comments

This is part of an ongoing series where I write about a different author for each letter of the alphabet. You can see them all here.

I’m going through the alphabet, and had a bit of a choice for C. Well, lots of choices, of course, but there are two authors I’ve been avidly collecting for years who begin with C – Ivy Compton-Burnett and Richmal Crompton. I’ve gone for Crompton, but maybe I’ll do ICB for I as a sneaky way in.

How many books do I have by Richmal Crompton?

For the sake of this post, I haven’t included any of the William books, though I do have about ten of them. Mostly so I can make this manageable. Because, even just looking at the novels and short stories she wrote for adults, I have 41. Our Richmal was prolific.

I do have Family Roundabout in the Persephone edition too, but forgot when I took the photo, since it’s in a different part of the house.

How many of these have I read?

I’ve put them in piles of read and unread here – the pile on the right being the ones I’ve read. I think. Most of my avid Crompton reading was around 2002-2004, and I’m a bit hazy on some of them. But I think I’ve read 30 of her books.

How did I start reading Crompton?

I don’t remember when I first read the William books, though I suspect I came to them first through Martin Jarvis’s wonderful narration. I know that I played Ginger (and Colin played William) in a village show when we were 8 or 9.

But I started reading her books for adults in 2002, when I was in Hay-on-Wye and happened to see one on a shelf. I think it was Frost at Morning, though it might have been Weatherley Parade or Family Roundabout. Those were certainly the first three I read.

And fun fact, it’s how I discovered Persephone – I’d read Family Roundabout in an early edition before I knew Persephone existed, and when I saw their edition at my local library, it got me thinking what other books they’d published that I might like.

General impressions….

I was obsessed for a few years, binge reading Crompton. And this was in that sweet spot of the internet – where a world of booksellers were opened up, but before everyone knew exactly how much their books were worth and before everybody was buying books online. It would be much more expensive to get these piles of Cromptons now, though thankfully Bello and Greyladies have brought quite a few of her books back into print.

I don’t know if I read all her best books early on or if my taste is changing, but when I read more Crompton now, I do find her to be lacking a little in finesse. It’s undoubtedly true that the same sorts of characters appear time and ago, and she is far too given to ellipses for effect. They aren’t great writing. But they are still delightful places of comfort to go, and at her best, she can be deliciously funny and suddenly poignant.

B is for Baker

StuckinaBook All , 19 Comments

This is part of an ongoing series where I write about a different author for each letter of the alphabet. You can see them all here.

Thanks for your lovely comments on my first post in this series, A is for Athill. I should have said – if anybody else wants to use the idea too, I’d be delighted to see which authors you come up with. And it’s a good gap-filler when you don’t feel inspired to review a book!

My choice of author today won’t surprise long-term StuckinaBook readers, and well done Andrea, who was the first to guess that Frank Baker would be the author I’d choose for B.

How many books do I have by Frank Baker?

There are two ways to answer this. On the one hand, there are twelve books in this pile – on the other, five of them are Miss Hargreaves. It’s my favourite novel and I get every edition I can find – I still don’t have the early editions with their lovely dustjacket, but maybe one day. At the bottom is the gorgeous Tartarus Press edition (which was published just after I recommended it to Persephone, who rejected it) – the blue ones are the Bloomsbury reprint that they did on my recommendation, which is still one of the most exciting moments in my life! Why two? Well, I lend it so often and don’t want to lose the Bloomsbury edition. And since I once had four of them, you can see why I’m nervous about not getting them back!

How many of these have I read?

I’ve read Miss Hargreaves, of course, and a handful of the others – Before I Go Hence, Stories of the Strange and Sinister, The Birds (which he claimed Alfred Hitchcock and/or Daphne du Maurier had plagiarised), and his autobiography, I Follow But Myself. I’ve also read Mr Allenby Loses The Way, in the Bodleian Library.

How did I start reading Baker?

I never particularly liked learning the piano, but I did discover that my piano teacher have very similar taste in books to me. Or, indeed, she helped form my taste. It was she who first lent me a copy of Miss Hargreaves (which has a lot of music stuff in it), and I was entranced. For the few who don’t know, it’s a novel about a man who invents an old, eccentric lady to get out of an awkward conversation. He and his friend give her all sorts of curious attributes, and send a letter inviting her to visit, as a joke. The joke turns on them when she arrives… it’s a book that really does make you laugh and cry. I’m so grateful to Lylah for introducing Miss Hargreaves to me, and vice versa.

General impressions…

Sadly, it’s rather diminishing returns after that. I was so excited to discover a new favourite author, but Miss Hargreaves is worlds better than the others I’ve tried. It’s hard to pinpoint what’s wrong with the others, but they just don’t have much spark or vitality.

My second favourite book by Baker is his autobiography, I Follow But Myself, told through portraits of various people he knew, including the famous (Edward Garnett, Arthur Machen) but mostly the unknown. It’s worth reading for the portrait of Amy Carr alone.

I still have three of his novels unread on my shelves, a couple of which have been there for nearly two decades. And several of his novels I haven’t found. Maybe lightning struck twice with Baker, and I’ll keep reading. But if it doesn’t, to have created Miss Hargreaves is more than enough for any author.

A is for Athill

StuckinaBook All , 20 Comments

I thought I’d start a little alphabetical series, where I pick an author for each letter of the alphabet – sharing which of their books I’ve read, which I own, how I came across them etc.

IS there an author for each letter of the alphabet that I can do this for? No, of course not, but we’ll cross the bridge when we get to the back end.

I’m starting with Diana Athill, largely because everybody has all of Jane Austen’s books.

How many books do I have by Athill?

According to a quick sweep of my shelves, I have seven – which is a pretty high percentage of them, I think. One is fiction (the short stories published by Persephone), most are forms of autobiography, and there’s a collection of letters in there too. I used to own Alive, Alive Oh! but I think I gave it away after I’d read it.

How many of these have I read?

I have definitely read three – Stet, Somewhere Towards the End, and Midsummer Night in the Workhouse. There’s a real possibility that I’ve read Instead of a Letter too, but I’m not sure – she covers the main events of it in several of her other books, so the blurb might just be telling me things I already know.

How did I start reading Athill?

According to the notes in the front of these books, I bought Yesterday Morning in 2009, though I still haven’t read it. Most of the others came in some sort of Athill spree in 2013, which must have followed me reading my first Athill – the wonderful Stet. More on that in a mo.

General impressions…

Stet is the best book I’ve read about the publishing industry, though I haven’t read an enormous amount. It tells of Athill’s time working as an editor, and is a wonderful insight to that process – and, in the second half, she details her experience working with authors including Jean Rhys, V.S. Naipaul, and Brian Moore. It’s a delicious, fascinating, intelligent book.

I’ve had less success with her other memoir-driven books – largely because they are often about how she slept with married men, and wasn’t the wife silly and irrational to get upset about it. Obviously it takes two to tango, but it doesn’t feel like very edifying reading.

She is still a wonderful writer (or was, I should say, having died last year) – and I’ll keep reading these. I do find that a memoirist has to have an element at least of connection with the reader – you have to like them, in essence – and I deeply admire Athill, but don’t always like her. With those glasses on, I’ll keep reading. (As for her fiction – I remember enjoying the stories but they were a bit forgettable; it was not her metier.)

Next time – B is for…

I shan’t be deciding them in advance, but I suspect any long-term reader of Stuck in a Book will have no difficulty guessing where I’m leaning.