Classics, Nonfiction, and Children's Literature
These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer (published 1926) introduces the Duke of Avon as a cold-hearted and ruthless man, so why does he purchase the young urchin that runs into him in the road one day? Although he is known as “Satanas” to those around him, the young urchin quickly become the duke’s devoted page,
A cotillion is a formal dance in which couples change partners, like a quadrille. It can also mean a general ball, specifically one for a debutant as she enters society for the first time. So, a cotillion can also be a kind of a training dance as well, one in which young children practice together
In the Regency romance novel Arabella by Georgette Heyer (published 1949), our titular heroine, the young daughter of a humble reverend, gets a chance to bloom in city society, especially after a rumor spread that she is a wealthy heiress. Robert Beaumaris, a wealthy dandy that sets the city standard of chic, is amused when
The titular young lady in The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer (published 1950; reissued 2009, 2023 by Sourcebooks Casablanca) is a spunky female main character who effortlessly brings life to the dreary Rivenhall home. This is an ideal historical fiction Rom Com put into a book! Note: I read a lightly edited version reissued two
Gadzooks! The 1922 Newbery award “runner up” (later renamed Newbery Honor) Cedric the Forester by Bernard Marshall (originally published by Appleton, 1921) is a perilous romp, wherein knights clash with the churls of Medieval England, united in a quest against invaders from Scotland and Wales. Furthermore, the saga tells the story of a Cedric, a
Beatrice Nash is an educated, talented, and pleasant woman. But life in 1914 England does not give much credence to those qualities when she has been left orphaned and impoverished at the old maid age of 22 without any marriage prospects. To make matters worse, she must rely on her unfriendly relatives for assistance in finding
William Shakespeare’s plays have abundant evidence of the influences on the man behind the words. Shakespeare obviously was familiar with the world and especially human nature. I’ve read that he did not get some geographic facts correct, but in general, he seems to have been pretty well rounded. Just read a play and you can
Fleas, Flies, and Friars: Children’s Poetry from the Middle Ages by Nicholas Orme (to be published March 2012, Cornell University Press) is something completely different from my normal reading, but I enjoyed it very much. It is part anthology of poetry that children learned and recited from 1200-1500 CE (translated from Middle English or Latin)
Bill Bryson is not a Shakespeare scholar, and his brief biography of Shakespeare (published 2007 for HarperCollins as part of the Eminent Lives series) reflects that. The tone of the book is light, accessible, and succinct. Bryson’s approach to the Bard was to admit the gaps in his life and rather focus on what we
I really love to sink in to a deep, many-hundred-page biography about a fascinating person, but I don’t always have time to do so. Jane Smiley’s biography of Charles Dickens (a part of the Penguin Lives series) is the opposite of a deep biography: it’s a succinct but relevant overview of Dickens’ life by looking
I wish I could finish off my series of posts on Henry VI with as much enthusiasm as I had for the second play, but 3 Henry VI (written 1595) was simply not as enjoyable as 2 Henry VI was. In the first place, 3 Henry VI is simply violent from the first scene, when
Although a slim volume, Shakespeare and his Contemporaries by Charles Nicholl (published by the British National Portrait Gallery 2005) accomplishes it’s purpose. As the title indicates, the volume illustrates the various persons, distinguished and not, that Shakespeare was familiar with during the years of his life. Some of these people were associates of the Bard:
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