Just borrowed

I've just borrowed two beautiful books from work & wanted to share them. Daphne Du Maurier at Home is by Hilary Macaskill. I've reviewed her book on Charles Dickens at Home here & this new book is in the same style. Daphne Du Maurier's novels were very often inspired by places, most especially houses in Cornwall like Menabilly & Kilmarth. From her first home in Fowey (which you can see on the cover) to Menabilly, the house she coveted & was eventually able to lease, to Kilmarth, her last home, place was very important to her. Menabilly was famously the inspiration for Manderley in Rebecca.

Menabilly also provided the inspiration for her historical novel The King's General which was set during the English Civil War. In this picture, Daphne is looking up to where a bricked up room containing a skeleton was discovered in 1824. This incident was the spark that led to the novel. Daphne Du Maurier at Home  is a lavishly illustrated book describing all Du Maurier's homes & the books she wrote while living in each of them.

I've been immersed in the Anglo Saxons lately. I've been enjoying Michael Wood's latest documentary series, Alfred the Great & the Anglo-Saxons, which led me back to Asser's Life of the king & Justin Pollard's more recent biography. This beautiful book by Nicholas J Higham & Martin J Ryan is perfect for anyone who's interested in the Anglo Saxon world. I read a review in one of my archaeological magazines & thought I would borrow it before taking the plunge & buying it (I've been a bit reckless in my book buying recently. I'll have to do a confessional post when all the loot turns up).

The book is a synthesis of information from historical & archaeological sources. As well as the narrative proper, there are sections called Sources and Issues with more in depth information about topics such as the Staffordshire Hoard (above) that was discovered in 2009, King Arthur, the Anglo Saxon cemetery at Spong Hill & the various settlements at York.

The illustrations are beautiful, from detailed maps & plans of archaeological sites to the great works of art, jewellery & manuscripts of the age such as the Vespasian Psalter above. I want to read it from cover to cover but it would also be an excellent introduction to the Anglo Saxons or a book to dip into on a specific topic. The authors acknowledge a long list of friends & colleagues who read & advised on different chapters as the book is obviously based on the work of many scholars past & present. I know I'm going to have to have my own copy, it's just a matter of time.

Dickens' Women - Miriam Margolyes & Sonia Fraser

Dickens’ Women is the script of the one woman show written by Miriam Margolyes & Sonia Fraser. In her Introduction, Margolyes has been fascinated by Dickens since she first read Oliver Twist as a girl. She believes that, more than any other writer, the man can be found in his work. Maybe that’s why there are so many biographies of Dickens.

It is a life worth studying in detail because of its great contrasts, its secrets and because of the genius of the subject. He is our greatest prose writer, he stands with Shakespeare as a master, his creations are etched in our consciousness. The life started in obscurity, and then rose to the heights of wealth and celebrity. It is a romantic story of rags to riches; these always appeal to the Public. But it is also a story of committed application, focused energy and occasionally ruthless exploitation.

Margolyes believes that the women in his life – his mother, his wife, his sister in law, his first love & his mistress – influenced the creation of the women in his books. This is not a new theory but it’s a compelling one. Knowing about Dickens’s life is an excellent way in to the novels. Dickens’ Women is a survey of some of the most theatrical of Dickens’s creations. It opens with Mrs Gamp, the midwife from Martin Chuzzlewit, cheerily talking about laying out the dead with her eye on a bottle on the mantelpiece. Dickens’s heroines are next & the curious fact that they’re all around 17 years old. This was the age at which Mary Hogarth, Dickens’s much-loved sister-in-law, died suddenly in Dickens’s arms after a night at the theatre. Dickens was distraught & wanted to be buried with Mary when his time came. He was most upset when her brother, George, died first & took his place in her grave.

His sinister or uncaring older women, like Mrs Pipchin in Dombey & Son, are based on the miserable landlady, Mrs Roylance, who he was sent to board with during his time at the blacking factory. It’s well-known that the period Dickens spent working in the factory at the age of 12 blighted his life. He blamed his mother, Elizabeth, for sending him back to the factory even after his father was released from prison. Nobody seemed to think that he should have been released from his servitude & sent to school. Although he cared for his mother financially in later years there doesn’t seem to be much warmth in their relationship.

Dickens fell in love with Maria Beadnell, a pretty but rather heartless young woman who rejected him. He romanticised her as Dora in David Copperfield & then, when they met in later life, caricatured her cruelly as Flora Finching in Little Dorrit. Other characters in Dickens’ Women include Edith Dombey’s dreadful mother, Mrs Skewton, the tiny chiropodist Miss Mowcher in David Copperfield (another portrait from life that led to hurt feelings & a quick rewriting of the character from sinister to kind) & a startling portrait of a lesbian, Miss Wade in Little Dorrit. The wonder is that he can write so movingly of a tormented woman like Miss Wade yet his prostitutes & fallen women are stereotypes. Nancy in Oliver Twist, Little Em’ly, Edith Dombey & Lady Dedlock have come straight from melodrama. Yet Dickens knew many young women through his charitable work who could have lent realism to his portrayals.

The play ends with monstrous Miss Havisham from Great Expectations & pathetic Miss Flite from Bleak House. Miss Flite has gone mad waiting for a judgement in her case before the Court of Chancery. She keeps birds & names them after the stages of her journey through the Court & the people she has met there – “Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon and Spinach!”

This Hesperus Press edition of Dickens’ Women also includes The Women in the Boxes, all the women who had to be left out of the stage show for lack of space. They include Betsey Trotwood from David Copperfield, the philanthropic Mrs Jellyby from Bleak House & Mrs Bardell from The Pickwick Papers. Miriam Margolyes writes with such enthusiasm for Dickens that if you haven’t read the novels you will be inspired to do so immediately. This is a wonderful introduction to Dickens the man & the writer & to some of his most fascinating creations. Miriam Margolyes will be touring Dickens’ Women next year for the Dickens Bicentenary. I’m sure it will be one of the highlights.

I’ve also enjoyed browsing through a lovely book by Hilary Macaskill, Charles Dickens at Home. The original photographs are by Graham Salter.

It traces the houses Dickens lived in from his birthplace in Portsmouth to his London homes, including the house in Doughty St which is now the Charles Dickens Museum.

It follows his travels abroad when he lived in France & Italy for months at a time & ends at Gad’s Hill, the home of his final years.

One of my favourite pictures is this one of the churchyard at Cooling where Dickens saw the little lozenge shaped graves that inspired the scene at the beginning of Great Expectations where Pip visits the graves of his parents & little brothers.

This atmospheric photo shows the graveyard at Bowes in Yorkshire which Dickens visited when he was researching the Cheap Schools for unwanted boys for Nicholas Nickleby. The inscriptions on the gravestones inspired some of the character’s names in the novel.

There are going to be so many books about Dickens published next year & I may be all Dickensed out by April, but I think I’ve made a good start already with these two books & Claire Tomalin’s magnificent biography. My online reading group is planning to read Martin Chuzzlewit early next year & I’m looking forward to Jenny Hartley’s edition of the Selected Letters. The full Pilgrim edition of the Letters is now mostly out of print & very expensive secondhand so a Selected edition full of footnotes will do very nicely.