Emily Dickinson and George Eliot

Even if you are unfamiliar with the poetry of Emily Dickinson this biography is an absorbing read with a strong cast of characters. There is the enigma of Emily herself. Austin the handsome and austere Heathcliff-like brother. Vinny (Lavinia) the charming younger sister. Sue Dickinson the literary sister-in-law next door, married to Austin and probably the closest person to Emily. Then there is Mabel Loomis Todd, the interloper.

Beautiful, ambitious and pushy, Mabel is drawn to the mysterious poet and keen to move in literary circles. Shunned by Emily she begins a passionate affair with Austin causing untold misery to the families living side-by-side.

Lyndall Gordon makes a convincing case that Emily Dickinson's infamous seclusion was not necessarily entirely voluntary. She suffered from severe epileptic fits which, at that time, would not have been acceptable in the social circles of Amherst, New England. In fact, Emily's active inward life contrasted with domesticity. She made the family bread 'because her father preferred it' and kept a flourishing conservatory.

After Emily's death, Mabel Loomis Todd finds her vocation, painstakingly cataloguing, copying and editing the hundreds of poems which Emily had written on scraps of paper, shopping lists and receipts. I love the idea of great poetry written on discarded paper - no fancy moleskine notebooks required!

Gordon presents a balanced view of Mabel Loomis Todd. Certainly she was ambitious and adulterous, but her skills as an editor and her recognition of Emily's genius ensured that the poems are available to us today.

Dickinson greatly admired George Eliot and and this has made me want to re-read The Mill on The Floss. As it's over six hundred pages - I may be a while! Meanwhile, here's a lovely wintery review of The Mill on the Floss from Frisbee: A Book Journal and if anyone could recommend a good biography of George Eliot it would be much appreciated.

Helen Simpson

Posy Simmonds illustration of Helen Simpson's The Festival of the Immortals (The Guardian)

Latest Waterstones irritation: buying a copy of Helen Simpson's new collection of short stories In-flight Entertainment and the assistant telling me that because I'd spent over £10.00 I was entitled to a half-price copy of a new chicklit type novel which he held up for my perusal. I told him I've nothing against superior chick-lit (loved The Nanny Diaries) but I'd rather choose a title myself or why not a half-price Jane Austen novel? Sadly he declined.

A new book from Helen Simpson is always a delight and this collection contains a wonderful story called The Festival of the Immortals where long-dead writers attend a modern literary festival. Charlotte Bronte is booked to read extracts from Villette and two women queueing for the tea tent are anticipating what she will be like. This story was published in The Guardian with a delicious illustration by Posy Simmonds and you can read it here.

I Prefer Reading has an excellent post on Helen Simpson. I'm off to finish the Emily Dickinson biography which is the best book I've read this year.

Emily Dickinson

This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me -
The simple News
that Nature told -
With tender Majesty

Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see -
For love of Her - Sweet - countrymen -
Judge tenderly - of Me

I'm completely absorbed in Lyndall Gordon's Lives Like Loaded Guns - Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds. It's an extraordinary biography which reads like a novel. Emily Dickinson's early reading and influences included the Bronte sisters, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot, particularly Maggie Tulliver from The Mill on the Floss. I love the thought of Dickinson and her sister-in-law Sue avidly reading all the new publications from England.

The Camomile Lawn

Helena Cuthbertson picked up the crumpled Times by her sleeping husband and went to the flower room to iron it.

Oh to have a flower room and the time to iron the papers! The Camomile Lawn has all the elements of a perfect novel. A big house overlooking the sea in Cornwall with a scented camomile lawn that slopes down to the coastal path. Helena and Richard lounging in their sunny garden, bickering over the newspapers and awaiting the arrival of their nephews and nieces. Polly, Walter, Calypso and Oliver, beautiful, young and amorous, arriving on the London train looking forward to their annual Penzance holiday. Ten-year old Sophie hiding on a branch up in the Ilex tree listening in to adult conversations. Plans for swimming in the cove, sunbathing and resurrecting Oliver's favourite game The Terror Run. All set against the gathering momentum of 1939 and the outbreak of World War 2.

Strange that we strongly associate Daphne Du Maurier with Cornwall, but not so much Mary Wesley. The Book Whisperer has an enticing review of another Wesley novel Part of the Furniture which I'd like to read. I've also recently been enjoying the posts and stunning photography on The Blue Cabin blog, admiring this yoga room and resolving to make more time for yoga like this fabulous lady. Trouble is, whenever I have some free time I pick up a book ...

Wartime Diaries

Thank you for your comments on Nella Last's Peace and for being kind enough not to point out that I'd got the apostrophe in the wrong place! Let's hope the much anticipated third volume has a less cliched cover. Caustic Cover Critic has a very good post on the way the 'Gorbals boys' images are edited for many social history book covers. I'm now reading Nella Last's War and Mary's comment about whether she was a truly likeable women has intrigued me. Certainly she had a kind heart, but does the fact that this is a diary necessarily mean that everything is true? Nella states that she wishes she was closer to her daughter-in-law but feels her daughter-in-law is jealous of her close relationship with her son. I couldn't help wondering whether Nella was a teensy bit jealous of her daughter-in-law!

What is in no doubt is her gift for writing. Nella reminded me a little of Jane Austen who remained unpublished for much of her life but never doubted her literary genius. To a certain extent, Nella did have an admiring audience for her writing. She was known for writing brilliant letters and when poor Jess had a complete nervous breakdown - what we would probably now call severe post-natal depression - she kept the doctor and matron in the hospital entertained with Nella's letters.

Nella writes with empathy of the unbearable strain that women were under with poverty, blackouts, food shortages and men going off to fight:

One woman I know - a big-made woman of about fifty-six who took on an air-raid warden job - has had a nervous breakdown. Her niece said she had always had a fear of the dark and, now she knew she would have to take her turn in the dark all winter, she has cracked up.

I want to read more about the blackouts so I've looked out The Provincial Lady in Wartime and I'm pretty sure there are some descriptions of the blackouts in Mary Wesley's The Camomile Lawn. Maybe somebody can remember?

Nella Last's Peace

Always I longed to write, but there was something missing. Only in my letter writing and MO have I found fulfilment of my girlhood yearning to write.

Browsing in Waterstone's biography section last weekend I picked up Nella Last's Peace, flicked through it, then became increasingly engrossed in Nella's diary entries and had to buy it. Nella Last was a housewife. One of many volunteers who kept a diary for the Mass Observation social organisation set up in 1937.

Nella embodies the 'make do and mend' austerity spirit. She writes about day-to-day life during the war and post-war years -the VJ (Victory in Japan) celebrations, managing her ration books, running a household, working for voluntary organisations and there are amusing anecdotes about her Siamese cat, Shan We, who accompanies her on picnics to the Lake District and her annoying neighbour, Mrs Atkinson, who constantly borrows her jam pan.

I've become increasingly interested in life writing. Nella was not a professional writer or an academic and yet her diary has literary qualities. Well-read, politically aware and finding fulfilment - and to a certain extent an escape from her mean-spirited husband - in her voluntary work and friendships with other women, Nella Last's diaries are an absorbing read.

Wigs on the Green

Reading Nancy Mitford makes me believe that writing comic novels is one of the most purely humanitarian endeavors civilization has ever come up with. Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

Nancy Mitford wrote two of the finest comic novels in the English language. Sadly, Wigs on the Green isn't one of them. To be fair I wasn't really in the mood for farce when I picked this up preferring something weighty and substantial, but of course I wanted to read a Mitford novel that hasn't been available in this country since 1935.

The opening was unpromising but I hoped the old Mitford magic would take over and draw me in. Certainly, in the portrayal of Mrs Lace the Local Beauty who dresses as if every day is a fancy dress party, you can see the comic potential of a writer who would go on to create the brilliant The Pursuit of Love (1945) and Love in a Cold Climate (1949).

The novel begins with Noel Foster who is left a small legacy by his aunt. He asks his friend, Jasper Aspect, a penniless cad to join him in his hunt to marry an heiress. Jasper suggests they go to the village of Chalford in search of Eugenia Malmains, the wealthiest heiress in England. On the village green they are startled by the appearance of the tall blonde Eugenia, standing on a wash-tub, wearing a jumper made from a Union Jack and haranguing the locals into joining The Union Jackshirts. The farce is further complicated by a runaway bride and her friend, Poppy, who has left her husband.

The fanaticism of Eugenia Malmains, is of course, a portrayal of Unity Mitford and in the light of what happened to Unity and the political events that later unfolded it is easy to understand why Mitford would not allow the novel to be re-published in her lifetime. One for Mitford completists only I think.