LONA MANNING
  • Home
  • Books
    • Shelley Novella
  • Research
    • About Shelley
    • Peterloo
    • Kitty Riddle
    • 18th C. love poetry
  • Jane Austen
  • Blog
  • About Me
    • Teaching Philosophy

CMP#77  Book Review: A Winter in London

11/28/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
This post continues my exploration of the literature of Jane Austen's contemporaries.​ Here's another long 18th century book review, this time for a "novel of fashion."

CMP#77  A WINTER IN LONDON -- Three Genres in One
Picture
    A Winter in London (1806) by Thomas Skinner Surr is a peculiar blend of a novel, with a melodramatic quasi-gothic plot awkwardly rubbing shoulders with celebrity gossip and social criticism. By quasi-gothic, I mean that there is nothing supernatural in the plot, but there is treachery, a villainous foreigner, anti-clericalism, titillating hints of incest narrowly averted, and a dungeon or two. The young hero, Edward Montagu, is a foundling.
    The handy thing about a Georgian-era foundling narrative is that you can show the foundling as a plucky and virtuous character struggling to find their way in a society based on birth and rank rather than merit, but, in the Big Reveal of True Parentage, you can explain that the foundling IS actually of good birth! Their good looks, excellent character and intelligence had to come from somewhere, after all. 
     Are novels about foundlings an attempt to subvert the social order, or does the Big Reveal reinforce the social order? Is this a way of having your cake and eating it too?
     Tom Jones, the foundling in Fielding’s 1749 novel, is of illegitimate birth but other foundlings such as Edward Evilen (1796) or Rosalie in the Mystic Cottager of Chamouny (1795) and Edward Montague of A Winter in London all have married parents who have been separated through some combination of bad luck and perfidy. The Big Reveal comes about as a result of amazing coincidence: the lovely Rosalie strums her guitar in the Swiss Alps until the one person in the world she wasn't supposed to meet seeks lodging in her remote cottage. Edward Montagu is raised in a cottage within sight of his true ancestral home.  He accidentally meets his father--who wrongly thinks his wife, Edward's mother, was unfaithful to him--while they are both roaming moodily around the neighbourhood...  


Read More
0 Comments

CMP#76: A Guide to Gothic Novels

11/22/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Nobody is entirely safe; nothing is secure. The Gothic world is quintessentially the fallen world, the vision of fallen man, living in fear and alienation, haunted by images of his mythic expulsion, by its repercussions, and by an awareness of his unavoidable wretchedness.
                                                                                             -- from Ann B. Tracy's introduction


Book Review: The Gothic Novel 1790–1830: Plot Summaries and Index to Motifs

    “I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my pocketbook." [says Isabelle Thorpe to Catherine Morland] "Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries. Those will last us some time.”
    “Yes, pretty well," [answers Catherine] "but are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid?” 

Picture
    Isabella and Catherine are binge-reading gothic novels in Bath, a popular pastime when Jane Austen wrote her first draft of Northanger Abbey. Because of the long delay before its actual publication in 1817, Austen felt compelled to note in her foreword that "thirteen years have passed since it was finished, many more since it was begun, and that during that period, places, manners, books, and opinions have undergone considerable changes."
    A hundred years later, Isabella Popp tells us, Isabella's seven horrid novels had fallen into such obscurity that they "were often presumed to be invented by Austen." In 1927, "Michael Sadleir, a British publisher, novelist, and book collector, located copies of all seven novels." The last one to surface was Orphans of the Rhine.
    This should be a reminder to us that prior to our digital age, finding copies of rare old book was a much more difficult and expensive challenge. Thanks to the internet and thanks to digitization, hundreds of these spine-chilling 18th-century novels are readily available, either for purchase or through your local university or community library.
​     You can also dive into the world of the gothic novel thanks to Professor Ann B. Tracy and her reference book: The Gothic Novel 1790-1830: Plot Summaries and Index to Motifs. 


Read More
0 Comments

CMP#75: The Perils of Petticoat Government

11/15/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture

​Austen scholars: “Austen’s novels are preoccupied with class and wealth in England!”

Silver Fork novelists: “Hold my beer.”

Book Review:  Mrs. Armytage, or, Female Domination, by Catherine Gore
PictureFormidable dowager (A portrait of Victorian art expert Mary Doyle, not Mrs. Armytage, but you get the idea)
   Mrs. Armytage (1831) by Catherine Gore is a three-volume novel of the “Silver Fork” school, meaning that it's a novel set in the upper echelons of English society and it follows the lifestyles of the rich and titled. Actually, Gore’s descriptions of country estate life, racing meets, carriages, and sprightly, cynical conversation are the least interesting parts of this story: the chief interest arises out of a clash of conflicting personalities. This is very much a character-driven novel.
    “There is something, perhaps, of Jane Austen’s influence to be traced in the novels of Catherine Grace Gore,” says the 1915 edition of the 
Cambridge History of English Literature. Yes, Gore has collected together her three or four families in a country village, except for the fact that the families are of higher rank and wealth than you typically find in Austen.
    We have Mrs. Armytage, a Yorkshire widow who has the full control of her late father’s and late husband’s lands and wealth. She is an assiduous manager of her property, a competent landlord, and benevolent patroness of many charities, but she is proud, controlling, and inflexible.
    Her son and heir Arthur is good-natured but thoughtless. He makes an impulsive marriage to a pretty girl from a much lower social class, which creates a breach between himself and his mother, especially when the new bride's vulgar relatives show up uninvited. Add to the mix an envious gossiping neighbour, and you have a slow-motion train wreck which I found pretty engrossing for the first two-thirds of the novel.    
​     Read on to spot the hints of Austen to be found in Mrs. Armytage:


Read More
0 Comments

    RSS Feed

    About the author:

    More about me here. My earlier posts (prior to June 2017) are about my time as a teacher of ESL in China,(just click on "China" in the menu below.) more recent posts focus on my writing, as well as Jane Austen and the long 18th century. Welcome!


    Categories

    All
    18th Century Novel Tropes
    Authoresses
    Book Reviews
    China
    China: Sightseeing
    Clutching My Pearls
    East & West Indies & Slavery
    Emma
    Humour
    Jane Austen
    Laowai At Large
    Mansfield Park
    Northanger Abbey
    Parody
    Persuasion
    Postmodern Pushback
    Pride Prejudice
    Religion In Austen
    Sanditon
    Sense And Sensibility
    Shelley
    Teaching

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    October 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    December 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    May 2017
    January 2017
    April 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014


    RSS Feed

    © Lona Manning 2023
Proudly powered by Weebly