'Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.' It has long been the opinion of at least some authorities on the English novel …
Category: The Classics Club
To the Lighthouse
by Virginia Wolff The British Library describes Wolff as 'one of the most innovative writers of the 20th century. Judged on To the Lighthouse, it isn't a description I would deny. Innovative she certainly was, but having read the novel - recommended to me as one of her best, and typical of her style, I …
Elinor and Marianne
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen A Review In Austen's (probably) first full-length novel, the Dashwood family are happy in their home at Norland Park. However, the property is entailed to a son of Mr Dashwood's first marriage and when he dies, Mrs Dashwood and their daughters, Elinor and Marianne are obliged to leave. Elinor …
'How many goodly creatures…..'
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 'They entered. The air seemed hot and somehow breathless with the scent of ambergris and sandalwood. On the domed ceiling of the hall, the colour organ had momentarily painted a tropical sunset. The Sixteen Sexophonists were playing an old favourite: "There ain't no Bottle in all the world …
The Mysteries of Udolpho
by Ann Radcliffe 'As the carriage wheels rolled heavily under the portcullis, Emily's heart sunk, and she seemed, as if she was going into her prison .... her imagination, ever awake to circumstance, suggested even more terrors than her reason could justify.' I've been neglecting the books on my Classics Club list for a while …
Mansfield Park
by Jane Austen Having finished my review of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe with the words of Jane Austen, I can do no better here than allow Sir Walter to introduce this one: '[Jane Austen] had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful …
Nine Good Reasons
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov Forget the film! Whatever its merits or demerits, the movie starring Will Smith has almost no connection at all with the short story collection having the same title. Three of Asimov's characters - Susan Calvin, the robopsychologist, Robertson, the head of US Robots, and Lanning, one of its directors, do …
The Gods Themselves
by Isaac Asimov 'The plutonium/tungsten can make its cycle endlessly back and forth between Universe and para- Universe, yielding energy first in one and then in another . . . Both sides can gain energy from what is, in effect, an inter-Universe Electron Pump.' This piece of pseudo science is how the jumped-up radiochemist-cum-physicist Hallam …
The Woman in White
by Wilkie Collins A Review Published in 1860, The Woman in White, in its language and style, is very much a novel of its time, adopting first person multiple narratives, melodrama and bizarre coincidences in its telling. It is a mystery thriller, almost gothic in tone, combining themes that resonate even today: the equality of …
Rich And Over Here
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James The Portrait of a Lady is one of those classics I always meant to read but never got around to it. It came up at last as essential reading on a lecture course on the English novel, so I felt obliged to tackle it. Though it has …
Bookheathen Scribblings 