So I just happened across this short story/novella by searching Elizabeth Gaskell on Project Gutenberg ... it's called "A House to Let" and it's a Dickens/Wilkie Collins/Gaskell/Anne Proctor collaboration. It was so good! Really a perfect combination of what each of them do very well. I'm now ISO other collaborations and writing from any of them about how their process worked.
Everyone should read it!
No spoilers - put the name of the book first and then the rest of the text in the spoiler tag which I think works like this > !Bruce Willis was dead the whole time.! < with no spaces between the special characters.
Aside from North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (although Wives and Daughters is the only other one of her books I've read- and it was exclusively about rich people) and Thomas Hardy's novels, ALL they ever talk about is rich people! And it's boring. I think it's well-known that his writing about all different classes of people is part of what made him so revolutionary, but I didn't realize how much of a drag it is when there's no variety in the characters.
I actually really, REALLY loved The Moonstone and The Woman in White by The Inimitable's close companion Collins, but those were mostly about rich people - with an occasional poor person thrown in as an accessory to murder or something. And I adored Far From the Madding Crowd and Tess of the D'urbevilles, which are exclusively about pastoral life, but found Hardy even more depressing than Dickens.
This post brought to you by the fact that I felt I needed a break from Dickens and started reading Vanity Fair. I don't think I'm going to finish it.
What other Victorian literature have you read and liked and feel presents varied characters?
Sometimes in my reading, I come across some events or norms which just make me really wish that our world were still able to be like that today.
For example - the hospitality. Like, someone is wandering through a country town and a total stranger just puts them up for the night. Some unknown person comes to tea. There's a million examples of this.
Another thing for me is the loyalty among friends, and domestics (I also find myself always wondering how even the most humble people keep servants ... it's so alien!) Esther and Ada's relationship in Bleak House, Herbert and Pip in Great Expectations - again, a million examples.
Those are the main two that come to mind for me, and I'm wondering if anyone else has these same kinds of thoughts about any (seeming) norms. Just wishing that kind of thing was still around today.
I absolutely love listening to Dickens books on audio. His writing is particularly suited to being read aloud - he did a lot of readings, so he definitely wrote with an eye on that (kind of like you can tell modern books have been written with an eye on film adaptations). The dialogue is so fantastic, the wordplay so intricate and funny, the images so evocative (I can't recall weeping at death scenes harder than I've wept when children die in his novels ... ) It's so perfect for read aloud.
What is your favorite on audio? Please try to specify the narrator if you can, since there are multiple versions of all of his popular books. Conversely, are there any you remember trying to listen to but didn't like (for any reason)?
So curious to hear people's responses.
So, I mean a book where the MC is a child for a large portion of the book (at least 1/3). I just can't fathom how an adult man can write children so authentically.
Some of the prose just makes my inner child feel so seen! It's insane. Sometimes I'll read a few sentences and be struck by the most vivid childhood memory of feeling exactly that way. The scene where Pip is left alone in the courtyard the first time he visits Miss Havisham's and Estella abandons him and he wants to kick the walls ... I had to stop and take deep breaths after I finished that passage.
So, like Our Mutual Friend wouldn't fit this category, there's only smatterings of when the characters are small children and I believe they're only flashbacks. Same for Little Dorritt. The MC grows up quickly.
GE and David Copperfield would be examples of what I'm looking for. I know there are so many. I've read GE and DC and Oliver Twist, but beyond that I am open! (I will read them all, eventually, but I just finished a book and want to start something else today or tomorrow.)
I'm really glad to have found this sub, I have become a Dickens fiend lately. One of my favorite things about him in general is the side characters he creates - who eventually are keys to the plot moving along, but are so memorable in their own right.
I was wondering which ones are people's favorites / most memorable. I have mine but I don't want to push the conversation in any one direction!
So I have been on a Charles Dickens kick, and in the past few months have read or re-read Bleak House, Little Doritt, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, The Pickwick Papers, and David Copperfield. I am going to take a break, but I do think he has settled into my top 3 favorite authors. I'm in AWE of his talent, absolutely.
But what I love about Dickens is:
the way he writes little children
the crazy cast of characters he creates, some ridiculous and some with a ton of gravity
the twists and turns in the stories
the vivid descriptions of London - and elsewhere - that make me actually visualize it - I am not a visual person and usually cannot picture things in my head, but with Dickens it's different
The friendships he portrays
his stark exposure of the random cruelty of class
What I don't like is ... the constant polite social mores. I completely understand why it's necessary but I'm so annoyed with it at this point.
Anything you can think of that would give this variety of well-written children, vivid description, large and interesting cast of characters, intricate story that is modern and not filled with people tripping over themselves to be proper? Bonus points if it's got a class struggle, but not essential. (I've read Demon Copperhead already, absolutely LOVED it.)
I did think of Tom Robbins, but I read all his books in my early 20s and when I went back to start one I was like, yeah, there was a time and a place for this in my life and it was 30 years ago, lol.
I'd love any suggestions.