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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Victorian Literature - your recommendations humbly sought

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Whisky Priestess

12:32 / 26.02.08

So, I want to read as much and as widely as I can in the ill-defined genre that is Victorian Literature. For the purpose of my "researches" I'm going to include anything published or set from about 1800 to 1910 (so Edgeworth, Austen and the Romantics are in, seeing as they provide the backdrop for a lot of later work).

I'm especially interested in fiction (and good, interesting-to-read factual studies or biographies) which covers the period 1870ish to 1900. So far I've read stuff by Lytton Strachey (Eminent Victorians, natch), Rider Haggard (hurrah!), Sarah Waters, Wilkie Collins, Susanna Clarke, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, Maria Edgeworth, the Brontes, Lovecraft, Poe, a wee bit of G. Eliot and anyone else vaguely relevant I can lay my hands on.

However, I still need feeding - do you have any less obvious (or even very obvious but not mentioned above) authors or books I can read? I'm borrowing Carter Beats the Devil from a friend on Wednesday, but after that I'm kind of running out. Non-doorstop books ideally, for commuting reasons - adventure stories and overblown melodramas very much welcomed!

14:19 / 26.02.08

My main interest in Victorian and Edwardian writing tends towards the supernatural and weird short story so theres that biase in my recomendations.

I'm currently working my way through the collected short stories of Walter De La Mare at the moment and i'm being constantly blown away at how beautiful, but also deeply disturbing, a lot of them are. Far more well known for his poetry, his short stories have only recently been brought back into print in three hefty volumes. He's often mentioned as laying the groundwork in the short, strange story that Robert Aickman was to go on to explore in the 60s and 70s. Robert Aickman is my all time favourite writer and i can certainly see the similarities in theme and in a general refusal to tidy everything up at the end so to speak. The short stories range from the 1890s up to the 1940s so do fit your timescale.

He also wrote a number of novels, none of which i've read yet but i have them on order, one of which, 'Memoirs of a Midget'. Angela Carter wrote a great long essay on it in her 'Expletives Deleted'.

I'd also recommend Arthur Machen, in particular 'The Great God Pan', 'The White People' and 'The Hill of Dreams', and the short stories of Oliver Onions.

Actually, one of the best short supernatural story anthologies ever published was 1944s Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural which has stories by Mare, Machen and Onions as well as many others dating from the early 19th up to the 1930s in its 1000+ pages. You can look at the contents on the Amazon page. Anyone interested in the spooky story should have it on their shelf!

Whisky Priestess

16:21 / 26.02.08

Ooh, brilliant, that's just the sort of thing I'm after. I forgot to mention above that I've also read all of MR James I can find, and loads of Saki.

Will check out the de la Mare stories, they sound great.

at the scarwash

16:40 / 26.02.08

Lady Audley's Secret is a fantastic read. Crumbling manor-house, dark secrets, unstable identities, class and gender crises; everything you could possibly ask from a Victorian potboiler.

And do read Middlemarch. It's a stunning work, the kind of thing that you'll return to again and again, like spring, or the idea of kindness. It's simply eternal and perfect, and makes you a better person having read it. There are few writers in English who have achieved the quiet perfection of Elliot's prose, and the non-hierarchical plot structure is frighteningly ahead of its time.

17:58 / 26.02.08

Some recommendations I made in the What Are You Reading? thread:

Melmoth the Wanderer, by Charles Robert Maturin: The "last" Gothic novel. It starts off a little slowly, but it turns into a really great novel. Lots of stories within stories, but it's primarily the tale of a guy who sold his soul to the devil wandering the earth and trying to tempt people to switch places with him.

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, by Jan Potocki: Another novel of stories within stories, this is probably my favorite book of the early 19th C. There's a thread about it somewhere.

Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, by James Hogg: This is a good one, where a fictional editor tells the story of a murderer before presenting the murderer's own confession, which provides a markedly different account of the events than that which the narrator has related. And there's a character who may or may not be imaginary or the devil.

I'll try to think of others.

Whisky Priestess

12:57 / 27.02.08

Lovely, thanks - I think I have Melmoth somewhere in the attic, I think - and Justified Sinner too, actually, but Saragossa sounds ideal - I'll Amazon it.

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:52 / 27.02.08

There's also a Wordsworth's Classics of Lady Audley that you can get for a quid or two...

14:11 / 27.02.08

Oh yeah, and Henry James is someone who immediately stands out as missing from your list.

15:03 / 27.02.08

George Gissing is a writer I've always liked. H.G.Wells should be on your radar too.

15:05 / 27.02.08

I think I have Melmoth somewhere in the attic, I think

Get him out, now! YOU'RE NOT SAFE WITH HIM UP THERE!!

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

19:08 / 27.02.08

The Melmoth is coming from inside the house!!!

07:28 / 28.02.08

I'm borrowing Carter Beats the Devil from a friend on Wednesday, but after that I'm kind of running out.

This is a 21st Century novel surely? Set in the 1920s.

Someone mentoned Henry James upthread and it made me think - if you're interested in modern books that explore the same period you could probably do worse than reading David Lodge's fictionalised biography of Henry James, Author, Author. It creates an interesting backdrop for a writer some people find quite tricky.

All Acting Regiment

14:39 / 28.02.08

Yep, go go go Henry James and of course Joseph Conrad. For James see Portrait of a Lady and The Turn of the Screw just to begin with, then read the Ezra Pound essay on him for complete catalogue. With Conrad read Heart of Darkness, The Mirror of the Sea and The Secret Agent and then when you have time work through Nostromo and the other heavier novels.

15:38 / 01.03.08

Rider Haggard's SHE is wonderfully preposterous, particularly for the transcription of the writing on potshard into first ancient Greek and then, because of course some readers might have trouble with the translations, into modern Greek before eventually being rendered into English.

miss wonderstarr

17:07 / 01.03.08

I think the two Alice books must qualify as landmarks in Victorian literature. When researching around those books, I read a number of other interesting studies: Matthew Sweet's Inventing the Victorians was particularly accessible and fascinating, as I remember.

Whisky Priestess

12:07 / 02.03.08

I think I have Melmoth somewhere in the attic, I think

Get him out, now! YOU'RE NOT SAFE WITH HIM UP THERE!!

It's OK, he's up there with Bertha Rochester. I think they're toasting marshmallows.

Oh God, I smell burning ...

Thanks all for the further recommendations. SHE I've read, and it ROCKS, same goes for Heart of Darkness but I think it could stand a re-read.

A superb session at the PDSA yesterday yielded the following, however, which are now cued up and ready to go:

Dickens - The Haunted House (new to me) and Tale of Two Cities (read before, but not for ages)

Collins - The Woman in White. SCORE!

Grossmith - Diary of a Nobody (read a few times but always worth a re-read)

Whisky Priestess

12:08 / 02.03.08

Turn of the Screw I've read too, but don't currently own. I think I may leave James until later and concentrate on English stuff for the moment.

And you're right about Carter - I thought it was 1890s but it looks good anyway ...

12:32 / 02.03.08

James might as well be English. He lived there long enough, and I think he self-identified as English. I just recall that when I was an undergraduate, I took a class on the American Novel one semester, in which we read Portrait of a Lady, and then the next semester I took the British Novel, and we read Portrait of a Lady. I think both sides like to claim him.

All Acting Regiment

13:05 / 02.03.08

It's a good question re: James, as, like Conrad, he became a 'naturalised Englishman'. Yet a lot of the books are about conflict between American-ness and French-ness and English-ness (or, because James is a bit clever, the idea that it all comes down to who the characters are anyway).

Whisky Priestess

23:19 / 02.03.08

Ah, fair enough. He's a sort of novelistic T.S. Eliot, then? (I always loved that dry Virginia Woolf diary entry that describe T.S.E. turning up in "a four-piece suit").

My ignorance of James's work is shocking, I freely admit, having only read Turn of the Screw which is, IIRC, set in England ...0

All Acting Regiment

15:03 / 03.03.08

In some ways, but a lot kinder to his characters than Eliot.

Hydra vs Leviathan

20:05 / 03.03.08

Hardy's kind of obvious, though not mentioned.

Didn't Lovecraft's fiction writing career start rather later than 1910? Most of his famous stuff is from the late 20s and early 30s, IIRC.

Machen seconded, tho. *Big* influence on old HPL, with the English/Welsh borders portrayed in a very similar vibe to HP's New England. Algernon Blackwood is worth checking too (while on a horror tip).

Whisky Priestess

15:08 / 04.03.08

Didn't Lovecraft's fiction writing career start rather later than 1910? Most of his famous stuff is from the late 20s and early 30s, IIRC.

I'm sure you're right, but I *think* a lot of the stories are set well before then, or else in an unspecified fin-de-siecle kind of no-time.

S'the atmosphere and style I'm interested in though mostly. And Lovecraft obviously has that in spades ...

15:55 / 05.03.08

I know you're looking mostly for English fiction, but may I recommend making an exception for some of Louisa May Alcott's gothic melodramas? Before and during the writing of Little Women, Alcott supported herself writing magazine stories and serials like "A Long Fatal Love Chase" and "Behind a Mask; A Woman's Power" - essentially, the stories Jo writes for The Weekly Volcano. I've only read bits and pieces online, but they've stoked my interest in reading more. There are a number of collections out, including one published in 2006, so they shouldn't be hard to find.

"Suppose I broke away and left you, or made it impossible for you to stay. That I was base and false; in every way unworthy of your love, and it was clearly right for you to go, what would you do then?"

"Go away and–"
He interrupted with a triumphant laugh, "Die as heroines always do, tender slaves as they are."
"No, live and forget you", was the unexpected reply.

–A Long Fatal Love Chase, p. 46.

21:59 / 05.03.08

Walter Scott. He's a bit early to be called a Victorian, but he falls into your time period and the request for "adventure stories and overblown melodramas".

13:23 / 07.03.08

You might try Trilby by George du Maurier, if you haven't already: features artistic dissolution and the original Svengali.

13:22 / 11.03.08

I've been planning to read James Joyce... however, as I haven't actually read it I can hardly recommend it. That won't stop me mind you - I think one in particular (Ulysses) is supposed to address the concept of personal realities; apparently very cutting edge in its day. Comes highly recommended by RAW (not that this exactly means much).

Better yet, you can get it for free here. You'll probably find others of interest on this site.

J.

14:39 / 11.03.08

Well... Ulysses was set in 1904, though it was written over a period a decade or so later, so I'm not sure it would be as representative of Victorian Lit as perhaps some other, earlier works. Certainly in terms of literary pigeonholes it would usually be shoved into Modernism first. Also worth thinking about would be how to understand a novel set in Dublin not too far before the declaration of an independent Irish Republic as part of some sort of extended Victorian period or in the context of the British Empire generally.

18:03 / 11.03.08

However, Ulysses is definitely 1900s and possibly Georgian(?)

I did hesitate though when I thought that suggestions had to be exclusively English until I remembered that Lovecraft is exclusively (?) American...

That's an excellent point though Blake, I didn't realise the significance of the timing of Ulysses and as a recent British resident, my interest in British Imperial history is growing.

Whisky Priestess

14:51 / 14.03.08

Thanks all. The Allcott sounds top!

In the interests of feedback, I can now report that The Haunted House is

a) a bit crap (bills itself as a ghost novella when it's not even a series of ghost stories, just a series of apparently random stories by various authors with no ghosts, chills or horror to speak of, apart from the Wilkie Collins section)

b) not so much by Dickens as by Dickens and his mates, only some of whom (Gaskell, Collins) are any good and the rest deservedly forgotten

Very much for the committed (possibly institutionalised) fanchild.

All Acting Regiment

16:57 / 18.03.08

French do you? Thais by Anatole France. It's very.

03:55 / 19.03.08

What about E.M. Forster? I've only read "Where Angels Fear to Tread". Not a fantastic story, but woven in it is Wildean insight into human nature.

All Acting Regiment

11:20 / 19.03.08

Keep away from Howards End, though. Not a bad book at all, its just that the characters cry out to be strangled at every snap of the spine.

11:57 / 19.03.08

Keep away from Howards End, though. Not a bad book at all, its just that the characters cry out to be strangled at every snap of the spine.

I think that my girlfriend would hunt you down and kill you if she happened to read that post.

Whisky Priestess

12:33 / 19.03.08

Read it, wasn't a massive fan. Although I liked when (SPOILERS) Bast died of galloping symbolism (crushed by a bookshelf).

Forster's a good call though, thanks.

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