Book Buying

[poliphilo]

We go to the bookshop to buy Jane Austen. The Complete Works.

And we see this hardback boxed set, with the texts printed on Bible paper edged in gold (quite unnecessary) costing no more than a clutch of decent paperbacks.

What's not to like?

Well- one thing really; they have the early 20th century illustrations by Hugh Thomson- which are very charming but wrong.

I'd rather not have my novels illustrated. I want to imagine things my own way. Only kids books should be illustrated.

And to illustrate Austen is a violation of her aesthetic. Her lightness and swiftness are bound up with her refusal of description. What does Mr Bingley look like? He has a black hat and a blue coat.

Hugh Thomson's pictures are all about bonnets and frocks. Austen could care less.

But I've seen the Austen films. My vision is already corrupted. I can't help but see her characters as Emma Thompson, Kate Winslett, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth. Pemberley is forever Lyme Park.

What further harm can Thomson do?

And hard covers, Bible paper, gold edges.....

We buy them.

We also buy a copy of Anne Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolfo (roughly contemporary with Austen.) I read it on the train coming back from town. Radcliffe is all description. Her heroine lives in the foothills of the Pyrenees and spends her time collecting botanical specimens and playing the lute in mountain glades. Sooner or later she's going to be abducted by brigands and it can't happen a page too soon.

Comments

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

Oh, you must read Udolpho just before you read Northanger Abbey... Priceless combo!!! (There's nothing like intertextuality, especially mocking intertextuality! :-P)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm underway with Udolfo. But-omigod-there's almost 700 pages of it!

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

Northanger Abbey is a breeze in comparison, but it is so much funnier when you've read Udolpho first... Think of Northanger Abbey as a reward waiting for you at the end of Udolpho!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

OK. I'll grin and bear it....:)

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

I laughed all the way through Northanger Abbey... It is, truly, hillarious!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm lookin forward to it.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Udolpho was the funniest book I read in 2002!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's heartening news.

[geodesus-christ.livejournal.com]

How do you feel about the John Tenniel drawings in Alice in Wonderland? I've read that they're really important to the book for a variety of reasons; personally I think they're interesting but they take away as much as they add.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think of Tenniel as (almost) the co-author of Alice. I love his work.

But then I was exposed to the Tenniel-illustrated Alice as a very small child. It's like a sacred text to me and I can't be objective about it.

When I was at school they had these old bound copies of Punch and I used to leaf through them for the Tenniel cartoons.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I prefer the Rackham ones myself. They have more of a nighmarish quality which fits the text.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Rackham is certainly wonderful, but- well- as far as I'm concerned, "the first cut is the deepest."

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Sooner later she's going to be abducted by brigands and it can't happen a page too soon.

Your kind of novel, all right!

Congratulations on a super find.

(I was at a used book sale late this afternoon; they were closing in thirty minutes, and had just cut the prices in half. I raked books off the shelf until I filled a box--got Kate some children's books for her school library collection and some old novels from authors I liked long ago.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Udolfo is supposed to have a weird, dreamlike atmosphere and I'm hoping that will carry me through.

But all the ghosts are apparently explained away- as in Scooby-do- which is something I heartily disapprove of.

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

If you ever DO regret the purchase on Bible paper, DO keep me first in line to relieve you of them.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Heheheh- mine, all mine!

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

oh, yum!

All the books you talk about, the way you talk about them, now I want to read them - the ones I haven't read, and the ones I HAVE read - again.

There isn't enough time. I'd have to give something up. LJ isn't an option. Maybe my JOB?

I'll put Mysteries of Udolfo on that long growing list.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Udolfo is long- nearly 700 pages- but it takes one back to the late 18th century and the dawn of romanticism- and it's a nice sort of place to be.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

But I've seen the Austen films. My vision is already corrupted. I can't help but see her characters as Emma Thompson, Kate Winslett, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth. Pemberley is forever Lyme Park.

Who was that anemic blonde who played the second daughter in P&P?

Oh...you mean that wasn't REALLY Pemberly?

Sigh.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You mean Jane? I'm afraid I don't know. She was good though, wasn't she?

Lyme Park is within easy reach of South Manchester and when I was living there I visited it several times. The grounds (and maybe the house too) are open to the public.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

Allison Steadman, I believe, played Jane.

I'm afraid by the time I get to your side of the ocean, I'll be too old to go walking in Lyme Park...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I reckon it's time for some Googling.

And here we are. Here's a list of the principals


Colin Firth .... Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy
Jennifer Ehle .... Miss Elizabeth Bennet
David Bamber .... Mr. Collins
Crispin Bonham-Carter .... Mr. Charles Bingley
Anna Chancellor .... Miss Caroline Bingley
Susannah Harker .... Miss Jane Bennet
Barbara Leigh-Hunt .... Lady Catherine de Bourgh
Adrian Lukis .... Mr. George Wickham
Julia Sawalha .... Lydia Bennet
Alison Steadman .... Mrs. Bennet
Benjamin Whitrow .... Mr. Bennet

From the same site I discover that Lyme Park was only used for exterior shots. The Pemberley interiors were shot at Sudbury Hall.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

But I've seen the Austen films. My vision is already corrupted. I can't help but see her characters as Emma Thompson, Kate Winslett, Hugh Grant and Colin Firth. Pemberley is forever Lyme Park

You remind me here of something that happened to me a few years ago. A&E ran, on Sunday nights, programs based on EM Forster's *Horatio Hornblower*. I was hooked. I admit that I was hooked because young Hornblower was played by the most gorgeous man I'd ever seen...young Ioan Gruffud. Immediately after the last program in the first series was broadcast I was at the library, and I developed a taste for those books...I'm almost all the way through the series now.
I admit Horatio will always be that curly haired brown eyed full lipped...oh, excuse me I'm drooling in the keyboard...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We studied Mr Midshipman Hornblower at school. Thrilling stuff.

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

The best part of that series was that A&E started a bookclub, for people to read the Hornblower books and discuss them. That isn't always my cup of tea (although I can think of a few people with whom I'd like to discuss some literature) but I know a lot of young people - got interested in those books. Maybe it isn't the best literature in the world, but I do think it's important for kids to know that just because a book is not modern, it isn't fun or interesting to read.

Reading has always been an important part of my life, and I've never been able to understand why everyone doesn't enjoy it as much as I do.

but then...if they did, it wouldn't be important to have connected with people like you, like Jackie...and others...here.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've always loved books.

And the more I read, the more I find I need to read.

A lifetime just isn't long enough for all the books that are out there.