I know next to nothing about Victorian and Regency novels. Austen, the Brontës, Eliot, Dickens, Hardy, all that Englishness. Give me The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy any day. I know enough to possibly get by in a pub quiz but that's it. I don't care who Heathcliff was.
Hadley Freeman wrote in today's Sunday Times about Wuthering Heights in a manner which led me to wonder what on earth a "wuther" was. Turns out it's not a wuther, it's to wuther.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines wuther as "to blow with a dull roaring sound". Which pretty much sums up my feelings about Victorian novels.
Oh dear. Mind you, I can’t abide SF and find ‘comedy’ unfunny.
ReplyDeleteBut I don’t think you should dismiss all novels of the 19th C.
You could start with North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell which gives an unparalleled insight into the effect of the Industrial Revolution on the lives of the poor and their struggles with the arrogant mill owners.
And you should try reading George Elliot too. Try Middlemarch or Adam Bede giving an insight into what happened to a desperate young woman because if the attitudes of the time. And Thomas Hardy, the author of Tess of the d’Urbervilles - another young woman raped and abandoned.
19 C novels aren’t all about the marriage market. Especially Dickens. It’s worth a try.
I never saw the point of novels. It’s just made up.
ReplyDeleteSci-fi for me too.
ReplyDeleteA bit late to the party, but read All Systems Red on hols this summer and loved it. A bit silly but i appreciated the nerdy humour.
Welcome Jamie. Reevio, right? Looking forward to your views on life, the universe and everything. Now I'll have to decide between George Eliot and Martha Wells. Er... I'll let you all know.
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