I stayed up WAY too late reading Syrie James’ RUNAWAY HEIRESS last night (loved it). Which of course means that it was time for a new book today.
And with Christmas only 10 days away, I figured it was finally time to read HOW THE DUKES STOLE CHRISTMAS. I had a lot of reasons to pick up this collection. Four authors I adore, all in book?! Historical Christmas romance!? That cover?!! But the biggest reason?
Sarah MacLean’s novella, “The Duke of Christmas Present”, the A Christmas Carol retelling in which Eben(ezer Scrooge), Duke of Allryd, actually gets his happily ever after with the woman he once lost.
I mean she may as well have sliced open a sack of catnip and let me roll in it. Because Scrooge and Belle’ s separation has always killed me - frankly, I blame that heartbreaking song in The Muppet Christmas Carol. But anyway, holy mistletoe I have been waiting to read this novella. Time for a little Victorian Christmas cheer!
first look at Joe as Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol
Vinette Robinson as Mary Cratchit (centre) in the upcoming, three-part adaptation by Stephen Knight (Peaky Blinders,Taboo). Several big names are attached to this one, including Tom Hardy and Guy Pearce.
Robinson comments, “In the books you don’t learn much about [Mary Cratchit] other than she is the wife of Bob and the mother of Tim, but, in this version of the story, Steven has imagined her side of events and how she deals with the strained circumstances that the family is under. First and foremost, she’s a good mum, she’s so resilient, she’s sensitive and she’s tough and she’ll do anything for her family. She has to keep her family safe and has to make some very tough decisions on that front. […] What’s great is that Steven has written two female characters who have agency, Lottie [Charlotte Riley as the Ghost of Christmas Present] and Mary, and done so in a really clever way. They are not passive and very much drive their own stories.”
“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” ⚓️ Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
QOTD: Do you have any favourite Romantic poets?
A few photos from 2020 and last year reminded me of Little Women’s themes. Sometimes I dislike reading 19th-century novels because they remind me of modern times so much but that’s also not really true. There’s so much more to 19th-century literature and society than just the vanity fair. I’ve been always drawn to how Romantic poets represented the sublime, especially the difference between science and human nature.
Have a peaceful Monday PS: Did we just hit 600 here? Waow, i’m getting shocked every week by how many people have joined me here. I’m really getting excited to share a few more study setups and my academia looks.
New ECF article, autumn issue, vol. 29, no. 1: “The Pleasures of ‘the World’: Rewriting Epistolarity in Burney, Edgeworth, and Austen,” by Rachael Scarborough King
One day I determined to paint a wonderful portrait of you. It was to have been my masterpiece. It is my masterpiece. But, as I worked at it, every flake and film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret. There was love in every line, and in every touch there was passion. I grew afraid that the world would know of my idolatry. I felt, Dorian, that I had told too much. Then it was that I resolved never to allow the picture to be exhibited. You were a little annoyed; but then you did not realize all that it meant to me. Harry, to whom I talked about it, laughed at me. But I did not mind that. When the picture was finished, and I sat alone with it, I felt that I was right. Well, after a few days, the portrait left my studio, and as soon as I had got rid of the intolerable fascination of its presence, it seemed to me that I had been foolish in imagining that I had said anything in it, more than that you were extremely good-looking and that I could paint. Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates. Art is more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour tell us of form and colour, that is all. It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more completely that it ever reveals him. And so when I got this offer from Paris I determined to make your portrait the principle thing in my exhibition. It never occurred to me that you would refuse. I see now that you were right. The picture must not be shown.
In June of 1890 The Picture of Dorian Gray, a tale of a beautiful young man who makes an entreaty that a portrait of him should age instead of himself and finds it doing horrendously just that, first appeared in Lippincotts Monthly Magazine on both sides of the Atlantic in the U.S. and England. Immediately notable for being Irish writer Oscar Wilde’s first (and only) novel it was also controversial in alluding to a great many subjects scandalizing polite society and seen as too morally vague, if not immoral. By August of 1890 Wilde mentioned 216 writings by critics on The Picture of Dorian Gray, claiming more than half he’d not read. Additional would follow. But he took special exception to three staggeringly negative reviews in the newspapers The Scots Observer, St. James Gazette and Daily Chronicle putting forth opinions about the story being for ‘outlawed noblemen and perverted telegraph boys’,‘so stupid and vulgar a piece of work’and‘a poisonous book’. Wilde in fact engaged in letters to the editors and correspondence back and forth for weeks. Tensions that can’t be ignored. Although prior the story’s first appearance Wilde had already thought of expanding The Picture of Dorian Gray, the story would undergo more changes than previously formed during the pre-publication process plus a particularly memorable preface of numerous aphorisms in the following year culminating in the 1891 edition.
Some four years later The Picture of Dorian Gray would too be a subject in Wilde’s legal battles, passages read out in Wilde’s ill-fated libel lawsuit as he was cross examined. This also later referred to in the first criminal trial against him, however the judge instructed the jury to ignore any literary judgements they might form. Literary questions though were being raised anew elsewhere. As scandals tend to do, publisher John Lane amongst pressure and publicity from the court proceedings removed Wilde from the Bodley Head catalogue. If a public circus in England wasn’t serious enough, in the States members of the press took the opportunity to condemn Wilde’s writing too. Copies of The Picture of Dorian Graywould be removed from libraries in at least two larger cities. The Library Journal however did opine on the question of unobjectionable books being retained despite author reputation. Nevertheless, Oscar Wilde as an author had already from the start been excluded from the American Library Association book list for popular small libraries and branches. (And Wilde would remain blacklisted in the subsequent larger ALAcatalogues until 1926.)
However,The Picture of Dorian Grayamong many other examples of Wilde’s writing has persisted, been adapted (the image used in this post is from the 1976 BBC Play of the Month dramatisation with the role of Dorian played by Peter Firth)and like other tales it drew on retold.
I fell in love with the novel in my youth. Youth also in appearance I have kept, leading to awkward situations and remarks over many years about how I have not changed a day and as to what my secret is. To which I like to quip about keeping a hidden painting of myself in my attic. Quizzical looks are received usually because they do not catch the reference (very disappointing) or if they do, well what would one reply? A chat on an artistic and intellectual exercise in ideas of beauty, pleasure, individuality, domination, transformation, the soul, and a discourse concerning art and life is probably not what most would expect. Familiarity with Dorian Graydoes not necessarily entail one is versed in the aesthetics in Victorian times informed by certain cultural movements, or today a work emblematic of Dark Academia.
Nor an author like Wilde the makings of a proper conversation depending on circumstances. In Oscar Wilde’s Scandalous Summer Antony Edmonds called Wilde the ‘most famous ephebophile of the nineteenth century’. True, countless biographers, historians, academics, storytellers, critics, journalists, and Wilde’s own grandson have brought to bear their own fascination with the man in whatever shape and degree it comes in, just as the public over the years. Simultaneously one of the most famous names and court cases in England and abroad, undoubtedly both complex in their time, yet having too formed into the muddled mythos recounted and still evolving of today.InOscar A life Matthew Sturgis put it perhaps best ‘in his posthumous existence he has assumed quite as many masks as he did during his own life, and with the same élan.’
