Burble

Mar. 30th, 2016 01:27 pm
kortirion_among_the_trees: (Bookworm)
[personal profile] kortirion_among_the_trees
New fantasy book set in Oxford, and featuring JRRT and CSL as characters, as well as Port Meadow and Wytham Wood (as settings).

The FT on Alan Garner.

It also occurs to me I should read Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood as well as William Horwood'd Duncton Wood (another 'Oxford'-based fantasy, which sounds like Watership Down, except it's about moles in Avebury/Rollright Stones).

And on a different subject: Edith Morley memoir published (first female professor at an English university - Prof of English Language at Reading in 1908)

This is what an upper-class Victorian woman was reading c. 1850 (library blog on commonplace book): really great snapshot, but, alas, a lost cause in pedagogical terms.  Nothing will ever dislodge the firm student belief that 19th c. women authors were downtrodden, forced to cower under pseudonyms lest the baleful eye of the 'patriarchy' eviscerate them where they stood.  What was obvious to any Victorian - that novels were mostly things written by women for women - in very large quantities - simply fails to penetrate modern preconceptions gleaned from popular culture (and perhaps reinforced by certain forms of literary criticism/theory that shall remain nameless).  The students come in with these notions, and they leave with them in tact, and no amount of empirical evidence will make the slightest dent in their bias.  And then people wonder why Daily Mail-reader types remain insusceptible to evidence-based arguments.

Date: 2016-03-30 04:37 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] colinbj.livejournal.com
The new book sounds intriguing, I enquired in Waterstones and they claim it hasn't been printed yet and is due for release early May!?

Date: 2016-03-30 05:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] arda-unmarred.livejournal.com
Yes, the person who wrote the review read it in proof!

Date: 2016-03-30 10:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] arda-unmarred.livejournal.com
Btw, this might be of interest: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/30/sherlock-holmes-manuscript-fetch-up-to-300000-auction-bonhams-conan-doyle

Date: 2016-03-30 10:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] atreic.livejournal.com
I have a huge soft spot for Duncton Wood, which (as I guess you know, hence why it's in this post) is set in a wood in the north most loop of the Thames, which is clearly mostly-Wytham Wood with a few elements stolen from elsewhere.

Date: 2016-03-30 11:26 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] arda-unmarred.livejournal.com
I went to a second-hand bookshop today and it had the second and third volumes of that series, but not Duncton Wood, so my curiosity shall for now remain unsatisfied.

Profile

kortirion_among_the_trees: (Default)
Kortirion_Among_The_Trees

December 2021

M T W T F S S
  12345
6789101112
13141516 171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 12th, 2025 11:13 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios