All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. We are fast approaching the halfway mark of our chapter-a-day (re)read of Anna Karenina and I wanted to honour the occasion with a post. I first read AK in the early 2000's but other than the ending, or at least Anna's … Continue reading Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy
She locked herself in her room. She needed time to get used to her maimed consciousness, her poor lopped life, before she could walk steadily to the place allotted her. A new searching light had fallen on her husband's character, and she could not judge him leniently: the twenty years in which she had believed … Continue reading Middlemarch Book Eight: Sunset and Sunrise #EliotReadalong
It is curious what patches of hardness and tenderness lie side by side in men's dispositions. I'm a little behind with these end-of-volume posts, considering I finished reading Middlemarch last weekend. It is tempting to combine the final two books into one post to be done with it, but I've gone this far, so onward … Continue reading Middlemarch Book Seven: Two Temptations #EliotReadalong
If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new. We are told … Continue reading Middlemarch Book Six: The Widow and The Wife #EliotReadalong
Dorothea seldom left home without her husband, but she did occasionally drive into Middlemarch alone, on little errands of shopping or charity such as occur to every lady of any wealth when she lives within three miles of a town. Book 5 of Middlemarch - The Dead Hand - consists of chapters 43 -53 and … Continue reading Middlemarch Book Five: The Dead Hand #EliotReadalong
Book 4 of Middlemarch - Three Love Problems - consists of chapters 34 -42 and was published in June 1872. Steven J Venturino’s A Serial Reading of Middlemarch asks us to consider the theme of Victorian Poetry throughout this section. It was while I was reading Three Love Problems that I discovered that the famous 1919 … Continue reading Middlemarch Book Four: Three Love Problems #EliotReadalong
...it is a comfortable disposition leading us to expect that the wisdom of providence or the folly of our friends, the mysteries of luck or the still greater mystery of our high individual value in the universe, will bring about agreeable issues, such as are consistent with our good taste in costume, and our general … Continue reading Middlemarch Book Three: Waiting For Death #EliotReadalong
One can begin so many things with a new person! - even begin to be a better man. Book two of Middlemarch: Old and Young comprises chapters 13 - 22 and was first published in February 1872. Steven J Venturino’s A Serial Reading of Middlemarch gives us the theme of Art, Memory & Hope for … Continue reading Middlemarch Book Two: Old and Young #EliotReadalong
Before getting too much further into Book Two of Middlemarch, 'Old and Young', I would like to attend to the first book, 'Miss Brooke'. Book One contains twelve chapters and the Prelude. What we now know as Middlemarch was published in serial form every two months by the Scottish publisher, John Blackwell, although the last … Continue reading Middlemarch: Book One Miss Brooke #EliotReadalong
Photo by Fumiaki Hayashi on Unsplash As many of you know, I am participating in a chapter-a-day readalong of Middlemarch at the moment. And for the first time in quite some time, I have a poetry prompt inspired by my reading. It's also perfectly timed for Poetry Month in Australia. In chapter six of Middlemarch it is discovered … Continue reading Sweet-apple | Sappho #EliotReadalong
Nick @One Catholic Life is once again hosting a chapter-a-day readalong. All year he has been reading George Eliot. I joined in the Adam Bede and Silas Marner readalongs earlier in the year. Now it is time to embark on our chapter-a-day readalong of Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life. Nick's introductory post provides all … Continue reading Middlemarch Chapter-a-day readalong
In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses - and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread lace, had their toy spinning wheels of polished oak - there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain palid undersized men, who, … Continue reading Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe | George Eliot
With a drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader. Adam Bede was my lucky choice for the last Classics Club Spin. I was thrilled to then discover that Nick @One Catholic … Continue reading Adam Bede | George Eliot #EliotReadalong
It will be nigh on impossible to write anything new or insightful about Tolstoy's War and Peace that has not be said before, so this will be a collection of loose impressions and thoughts that occurred to me throughout 2020 as I read a chapter-a-day (or more accurately seven chapters a week) with Nick. The … Continue reading War and Peace | Leo Tolstoy
The Wind Blows was first published in the Athenaeum on 27th August 1920 and then included in Bliss and Other Stories (1920), although I have also spotted on the Katherine Mansfield Society page that they claim it was published in 1915. So I dug a little deeper. I discovered a reference in J. McDonnell's Katherine Mansfield and the Modernist … Continue reading The Wind Blows | Katherine Mansfield #1920Club
