How to use this Page

Tweet

Anne Brontë is generally less well-known than Charlotte and Emily, but her novels are just as powerful as the more famous work of her sisters, especially The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Combining a sensational story of a man’s physical and moral decline through alcohol, a study of marital breakdown, a disquisition on the care and upbringing of children, and a hard-hitting critique of the position of women in Victorian society, this passionate tale of betrayal is set within a stern moral framework tempered by Anne Brontë’s optimistic belief in universal redemption. Drawing on her first-hand experiences with her brother Branwell, Brontë’s novel scandalized contemporary readers and it still retains its power to shock.

Below, Josephine McDonagh, who has written the introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, discusses the novel and its reception in a series of podcasts recorded by Podularity.

- On Anne’s life and the imaginative world she and her siblings inhabited.
[See post to listen to audio]
- Was Anne disappointed in love?
[See post to listen to audio]
- How Anne approached the themes of women, marriage, and masculinity that also preoccupied her sisters.
[See post to listen to audio]
- How Anne structured her narrative and how the novel came to called ‘the longest letter in English literature’.
[See post to listen to audio]
- What it means to be a man in the novel.
[See post to listen to audio]
- How the book was received.
[See post to listen to audio]
Listen to more Oxford World’s Classics audio guides

As avid Charlotte Bronte fans probably know, a film adaptation of her classic novel Jane Eyre hits theaters today, March 11! Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell, Holliday Grainger, Sally Hawkins, Tamzin Merchant, Imogen Poots, Judi Dench Director: Cary Fukunaga (“Sin Nombre”) Screenplay by: Moira Buffini (“Tamara Drewe”); Based on the novel by Charlotte Brontë MPAA Rating:

Tweet

…BEING A CONTINUATION OF THE POSTS ON MASS, MESS, AND THEIR KIN

By Anatoly Liberman

Mash has nothing to do with mass or mess, but it sounds like them, and since I have been meaning to write about masher ‘lady killer, etc.’ for a long time (see the last sentence of the previous post), I decided that this is the proper moment to do so.  Some of our best dictionaries say that the origin of masher is unknown.  However, if we disregard a few insupportable conjectures, the conclusion at which we will arrive won’t surprise anyone: masher is mash plus -er.   Only mash poses problems.  Masher enjoyed tremendous popularity during the last two decades of the 19^th and the beginning of the 20^th century, before it more or less faded from people’s memory.  However, those who read old books will have no trouble recognizing the word: it crops up in the literature of the late Victorian era, in American novels written before World War I (this is where I first saw it), and in such popular British publications as Punch’s Almanac, The Daily News, The Sporting Times, The Weekly Dispatch, and The Illustrated London News, among others.  The Piccadilly Masher was the title of a popular music hall song of the day.  While comparing swell, dandy, beau, and such nice synonyms for “a flamboyant man about town” as Corinthian and macaroni, all designating approximately the same type of person, knowledgeable correspondents to magazines said the following in 1882 (the year, in which, according to the OED, the word was very much in vogue, though, as Stephen Goranson has pointed out, it had some currency already in 1871):

“A masher is usually a ‘swell’, but every swell is not a masher.  To be ‘awfully mashed on’ a young woman is equivalent… to being ‘terrible spoons’ or ‘very hard hit’.  The masher proper is a young gentleman… who, having become a devout adorer of some fair actress, nightly frequents the house where she is engaged, that he may feast his eyes upon her beauty.”

The adoring youth, we are told, becomes the actress’s mash, “like the favorite food of a highly-fed horse.”  Thus, to be mashed means ‘to be dead nuts on’ or ‘hotly in love with’ a girl.  This is the passive.  In the active voice, to mash is ‘to make a girl dead nuts on oneself’.  I have something to say about going nuts and about nuts and spoons as participants in the amorous game but will say it another time.

The condemnation of highbrows was unanimous: this barbarous addition to our slang, this precious contribution to our vocabulary, a detestable cant word, this horrible word in common and certainly vulgar use, and so forth, but in retrospect (in 1943, when one would have thought there were more pressing things to discuss) mash, masher, and mashing, the admission came that “ugly as [they] were, [they] expressed shades of meaning hard to replace exactly by more elegant equivalents” (this is of course why slang exists!) “the masher was thought of as well dressed, and offensive, but extreme villainy was not impute

Tweet

London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew is an extraordinary work of investigative journalism, a work of literature, and a groundbreaking work of sociology. It centres on hundreds of interviews conducted by Mayhew with London’s street traders, beggars, and thieves, which provide unprecedented insight into the day-to-day struggle for survival on London’s streets in the 19th century.

In the video below, our edition’s editor, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, explains why he believes it is still well worth reading today. The interview was conducted by George Miller for Podularity. Robert has previously written this post for OUPblog.

Click here to view the embedded video.

THE BODY AT THE TOWER (THE AGENCY, BOOK 2), by Y.S. Lee (Candlewick 2010). Mary Quinn is back in this sequel to THE AGENCY: A SPY IN THE HOUSE. This time, she's disguised as a 12 year-old errand boy at the Palace of Westminster construction site to uncover the truth behind the fall of a bricklayer from atop St. Stephen's Tower. Along the way, she discovers plots within plots and finds herself having to negotiate who and what she is and wants to be...

THE AGENCY: THE BODY IN THE TOWER is another finely-wrought historical mystery, bringing to life the seamier side of a richly-imagined Victorian London. Readers will eagerly anticipate Book 3.

Tweet

By Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

It was an ordinary enough London winter’s evening: chilly, damp, and churning with crowds. I’d arranged to meet a friend at the Curzon Mayfair cinema, and after my packed tube had been held up between stations – ten sweaty minutes during which my fellow passengers had fumed silently, tutted audibly, and in one or two cases struck up tentative conversations with the person whose shopping was digging into their shins – I was late. Coming out of the entrance to the station, I nimbly side-stepped a beggar with a cardboard sign – sorry, bit of a rush, direct debit to Shelter, can’t stop – and hurried on my way to the cinema.

The film was Slumdog Millionaire: a nerve-shredding if ultimately cheering investigation into the hidden lives of the Indian slums. Coming out of the cinema, though, it was impossible to avoid the realiszation that equally vivid stories lay much closer to home. I retraced my steps to the tube station, and this time instead of brushing the beggar off I listened to what he had to say. It was a sadly familiar account of alcohol, a broken marriage, and homelessness, but as he told it the events took on a vividly personal colouring that was new and strange. He made me look again at what I thought I already knew.

The idea that what takes place under our noses can be hard to see clearly is hardly an original one; indeed, anyone who lives in a city soon learns to recognize the sensation of life being jolted out of its familiar routines, and assumptions being rearranged by new experiences. However, this idea took on a new resonance a few weeks later, when I was asked to edit a new selection of London Labour and the London Poor, Henry Mayhew’s mammoth set of interviews with the street-sellers, beggars, entertainers, prostitutes, thieves, and all the rest of the human flotsam and jetsam that had washed up in the capital during the 1840s and 1850s.

Ask most readers – and not a few critics – who Henry Mayhew was, and the result is likely to be at best a puzzled stare. Though his voice pops up occasionally in recent work, from Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Deceptions’ to novels such as Michel Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White, for the most part he has become the Invisible Man of Victorian culture. And like H. G. Wells’s hero, usually he is detectable only by the movements of his surroundings, from Charles Kingsley’s jeremiad against the exploitation of cheap tailors in Alton Locke, to the strange echoes of his interview subjects in characters like Jo in Dickens’s Bleak House.

In some ways these literary aftershocks and offshoots of London Labour and the London Poor accurately reflect the work’s own generic hybridity. Opening Mayhew’s pages, it is hard to escape the feeling that you are encountering a writer who has one foot in the world of fact, one foot in the world of fiction, and hops between them with a curious mixture of uncertainty and glee. Sober tables of research are interrupted by facts of the strange-but-true variety: ‘Total quantity of rain falling yearly in the metropolis, 10,686,132,230,400 cubic inches’, or ‘The drainage of London is about equal in length to the diameter of the earth itself’. Even cigar-ends don’t escape his myth-making tendencies. Not content with calculating the number thrown away each week (30,000) and guessing at the proportion picked up by the

I find the quilt-making process exhausting and yet every time I finish one (not that there have been that many times) I’m already thinking about my next.

Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow is a movie that has certainly grown on my over the years.  (I know I’ve must have mentioned this movie before!)  I love the production design, especially the costumes; Colleen Atwood can do no wrong.  But in the last few years (I watch it annually around this time) I’ve changed my focus to something else: the quilt.

This quilt is one of the prettiest I’ve seen.  The pictures are dark, I know, but I hope you can see what I see.  This simple triangle pattern might be my favorite quilt design.  I’ve seen this type of pattern more often in older quilts, like early and mid 19th C.  What I find most interesting are that the triangle’s bases in one row do not line up with those of the next.  (Unlike the example you can see here.) Instead the triangles themselves line up with the triangles in the second row over.  (Sorry for the possibly convoluted explanation.)   This pattern seems less common than the former, perhaps because it’s more difficult to keep all the rows lined up neatly without having the bases to match up.

Here you can see some detail.  This is also proof that I’m a certifiable sewing nerd: “Folks, forget Johnny - LOOK AT THE QUILT!”  Oh, I even love the shattered pieces and yellowing.  Look at the blue piece by Johnny’s right ear, isn’t it lovely?  (Gosh, I wonder how the art department found such a quilt.  It looks like a genuine antique, doesn’t it?)

Another slightly more awkward image of Johnny, I mean Ichabod, on the quilt.

I’d like to make a quilt like this.  I don’t know if I’d use feedsack or feedsack-like prints or something more Victorian.  I’d probably use colors that are lighter and maybe a little brighter although I really love the ones used in this piece.  Anyway, I don’t know when I’ll make this but I already have some fabric in my stash that would be suitable.  I hope to start this winter.

In the meantime, I’ve got some frocks to finish up and share with you!

James Alfred William George Galloway McAlistair ('Boston Jim')

Hailing from a small village in bonnie Scotland, James McAlistair, a determined and ambitious young political activist, set sail as a stowaway on a ship bound for the United States of America in 1773. On arriving at his destination he was discovered and thrown overboard, and found himself covered in tea.

After dragging himself ashore, and dusting himself down, McAlistair sneaked past the authorities and protesters and went into hiding. He lived on the streets of Boston for some weeks until he got back on his feet, found himself a place to stay and began work in the ship industry. He worked his way up from a tea boy to foreman. But McAlistair never forgot his roots, or the scenes and protests that met him on his arrival at the port. This, coupled with the way he saw other terriers being treated in the workplace, started him on his new calling.

'Boston Jim', as he was now known, travelled from town to town fighting for the rights of terriers throughout the sate of Massachusetts. He went on to become the founder of the Terriers Union that won the rights to a five day working week, two weeks holiday a year and a Bonio before bed time for terriers everywhere.

Original drawing for sale HERE.

You know, I'd really love to have a dog. I would like a dog not for the companionship, or to get fit, I'd like a dog so that I could dress him up as a Victorian gentleman. Then I would get him to parade around the house with my cat, who would be dressed in crinolines. Just for my amusement. Until that time arrives I've drawn them.

The phrase 'what am I doing with my life?' comes to mind. Again.

Actually, when I was away, a month or so ago, I was working on a book deadline. I'm not sure how much I can say about it yet, but as part of my research I found myself looking through lots of Victorian and Regency silhouettes. There are some stunningly beautiful examples, and I'd recommend doing a little research (Googling) yourself. I think you'll be inspired. I was. It's also how I'm trying to justify these two drawings.

THE INVISIBLE ORDER: RISE OF THE DARKLINGS, by Paul Crilley (Egmont 2010)(ages 10+). In the middle of Victorian London, twelve-year-old Emily and her nine-year-old brother William are recently orphaned. When Emily rescues a piskie in a back alley, she is drawn into an ages-old conflict involving two sects of the fey folk and the Invisible Order, a human secret society dedicated to protecting humanity from the fey.

Things become more personal when William is kidnapped -- she has to get him back, but whom can she trust? Together with Corrigan, the piskie she rescued, and Jack, a street urchin a year older than her, she must navigate her way through treachery and danger.

RISE OF THE DARKLINGS is an intense, action-packed ride through a Victorian London that sits atop a dangerous faerie realm. Emily is engaging and well-developed, while Corrigan and Jack are funny and likeable. Readers will anxiously await the publication of Book 2, THE FIRE KING.

Changeless Gail Carriger

SPOILERS! There are SPOILERS for Soulless in this review! It can't be helped!

There seems to be a plague of... humanity infecting London's supernatural. The Shadow Council can't figure it out, and to top it all off, Lord Maccon has some urgent family business crop up in Scotland and has gone to deal with it. As the plague spreads, Alexia follows it, along with Ivy, her sister, and a most intriguing French woman who makes the most marvelous parasols. The answer seems to lie at Maccon's ancestral home, where there is a pack of werewolves sorely lacking and alpha and feeling abandoned by the one they used to have.

Did you like the first? You'll like this one, too. The back is a bit misleading, as it makes it seem that Maccon and Alexia are having relationship issues when they're not. The same humor and manners and romance as the first, but takes the story further with the mystery of the humanity plague. Plus, some great new characters.

BUT HOLY COW THE ENDING! You might want to wait and read this at the end of August, so you can pick up Blameless right away and not fret over such a cliffhanger!

Book Provided by... my local library, then my wallet

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Soulless Gail Carriger

My friend Dana read this during my blog birthday party. It looked good and she confirmed that I would like it. It then went on to win an Alex this year. So, I checked it out from the library and LOVED LOVED LOVED it. I got the sequel right away and then when I finished it, ran to the bookstore and bought both of them and pre-ordered the third (which comes out this fall.)

Basic premise is this-- Victorian London. Ghosts, vampires, and werewolves exist and are upstanding members of society. Not everyone can be a supernatural. It has to do with an excess of soul. If you have too much soul, then you'll survive being changed into a vampire or werewolf, or can stick around as a ghost after you die.

To balance this, there's Alexia Tarabotti. She's a spinster, half-Italian, larger with a big nose, and has horrible Bluestocking tendencies. As if that weren't bad enough she has no soul. This comes rather in handy when she's attacked by a hungry vampire in the middle of a ball. Preternaturals like her cancel out the supernatural elements when they come in contact. As soon as the vampire touches her, his teeth turn back into teeth.

Of course, then she accidentally kills him. And gets herself involved in the detestable Lord Maccon's (alpha werewolf) investigation, which discovers that there are vampires and werewolves going missing. And new ones turning up with no idea about the rules of such things...

SO MUCH FUN!!! Victorian manners + steam punk + urban fantasy + good food + horribly awful hats + a great romance? YES PLEASE.

It's just fun and funny. Many of the characters are outrageous and over the top. Alexia's mother and half-sisters are picture-perfect pretty and unbelievably shallow. Lord Akeldama is a mincing vampire whose fashion sense is much more Regency dandy than Victorian aristocrat, which a bevy of young men looking after him. And Alexia's best friend, Ivy Hisselpenny (Hisselpenny?!) has Empire's worst taste in hats.

It was also a lot... steamier... than I was expecting, but I'm not complaining about that, especially as it was really well done. ;)

Book Provided by... my local library, and then my wallet.

Links to Amazon are an affiliate link. You can help support Biblio File by purchasing any item (not just the one linked to!) through these links. Read my full disclosure statement.

Anthony Trollope’s Palliser novels offer many fascinating parallels with today’s political scene, none more so than the fifth novel in the sequence, The Prime Minister.  Nicholas Shrimpton, of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, will be editing the new edition of the novel for Oxford World’s Classics (out next year). His profile of Trollope’s fictional hero, Plantagenet Palliser, finds some uncanny resemblances between fiction and reality.

What sort of person do we want as our Prime Minister?

Anthony Trollope’s example, in his novel The Prime Minister (1875-6), is an introverted, socially awkward technocrat whose ideal job was as Chancellor of the Exchequer – where he spent his time happily, but indecisively, pondering the mathematical problems of  the introduction of decimal currency.

He takes over as premier from a more charismatic member of his own party, without a general election to confirm his mandate, and gets on badly with the cabinet ministers who are not members of his own small circle of friends and admirers. Much less good at PR than his talented wife, he is very quick to lose his temper: ‘I think, sir, that your proposition is the most unbecoming and the most impertinent that ever was addressed to me’ is his over-the-top response when the silly but harmless Major Pountney approaches him in search of a seat in parliament. With a high sense of his own dignity, and an inflexible belief in the correctness of his moral compass, he presides over three years of government in which not a single ‘large measure’ is carried. As his struggles to smile and be pleasant suggest, he doesn’t enjoy the role of Prime Minister in the least. But when it looks as though he will have to give it up, he can’t bear the thought of yielding authority to anybody else.

Does this, perhaps, remind you of somebody?

I'm revising my sewing corner now that I have the new sewing table and this is one of my favourite things. I've loved inlaid Victorian boxes for years and finally found the sewing box I liked best on ebay. It wasn't the fanciest one by far, but it has all the details I've decided I wanted after years of gazing adoringly at pictures online.

On the outside it has nice inlaid wood in a detailed pattern. The main wood has a nice colour and patina. The inside of the lids of these antique sewing boxes are usually covered in ruched velvet, or have a button-tufted upholstery kind of look, or are just plain silk. This one is a bit unusual with the lattice pattern on green silk. Most of the boxes are lined with pink or blue.
My favourite parts are the trays with compartments. This one is fitted with silk-covered pincushions, and some silk-covered lids with small mother of pearl buttons.
This is a detail of the mother of pearl cartouche on the top. Sometimes these are silver, and some have engraved initials.
And there's a matching mother of pearl escutcheon - which is what the little detail around the key is called. Unfortunately this box didn't come with a key - but after all it's not that necessary. It would keep the lid closed while carrying the box around but it's not really meant for travel - well, just travel around the living room.
And this is the inside with just a few odds and ends. Mostly tins that keep pins, snaps and buttons. A place for everything and everything in it's place. Heaven!

Poetry first, discussion after.



My Last Duchess
by Robert Browning

Ferrara

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now: Frà Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said
"Frà Pandolf" by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps
Frà Pandolf chanced to say 'Her mantle laps
Over my lady's wrist too much,' or 'Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat': such stuff
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot of joy. She had
A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace—all and each
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked
Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, 'Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark'—and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
—E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will't please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. I repeat,
The Count your master's known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

Thoughts

This poem is set up as a dramatic monologue, spoken by Duke Ferrara. It starts out sounding like a guy bragging about a piece of artwork — here, a fresco — but quickly skews toward the dark side, as he moves on to describe his wife, and thence to discussing his suspicions (reasonable or not) that she was indiscriminate with her attentions. He "gave commands;/Then all smiles stopped together." And now, he's talking to the envoy of the Count, whose young daughter he hopes to marry.

So, your thoughts on the story here? I ask because although this poem was written in 1842, it is quite psychological. And although Browning conceived it as a dramatic monologue, which he intended to be "objective," it remains a lyrical, subjective piece, with a sort of Gothic (and therefore "Romantic") sensibility about it. As the reader/listener, you must piece together more of the story than you are actually given. I don't know about you, but I find this poem to contain elements of both mystery and horror writing, and it certainly succeeds in engaging me on a psychological level. Am I correct in suspecting the Duke caused his wife's death? If so, how can he seem somewhat rational, and how can he so easily contemplate the business arrangements in taking a second wife, or discuss a sculpture of Neptune? If I'm mistaken, what does it say about my mind that I would suspect him of such a heinous act? And yet, I can't be mistaken — his jealousy and rage are clearly expressed through his words; he also describes his pride in his social position, and even in his actions, which he considers proper.

"My Last Duchess" was written early in the Victorian era. English Society had become fairly repressive, particularly where issues of female sexuality were concerned. A question one might ask is where Browning's thoughts lay on the matter of sexual repression in general, and fear of feminine sexuality in particular. I don't know the answer, but it's pretty clear that this intensely psychological poem depicts the Duke's efforts to control and his wife and what can be viewed as her sexual conduct (or, if the Duke is to be believed — and it seems as if he is not — her sexual misconduct), even if only smiles and blushes are mentioned.

Indeed, to me the poem suggests that the Duke despised his wife and considered her a lesser being, as when he says that to school her on the many ways in which her behaviour fell short would have required him to stoop to (her?) lower level: "'Just this/Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,/Or there exceed the mark' . . . I choose/Never to stoop." Did Browning intend to delve into the politics of marriage? If so, what did he want the take-home message to be?

He is obviously pleased with his current control over his Last Duchess. He has had her life-like image affixed to the wall, where she may never misbehave. He can keep her behind the curtain, and see her smile only for him. As an object of art, he can own and control her in a way that he could not do with the living person. The reference to the sculpture being one of Neptune using a trident to tame a sea horse is there to fill the dual purpose of showing the Duke's return to less weighty matters, while again emphasizing the need for dominance and control.

I find this poem endlessly fascinating to contemplate, but will stop positing now. There are, however, a few more things to consider.

First, does it change your reading if you learn that "My Last Duchess" is based on the true story of Alfonso II d'Este, fifth Duke of Ferrara, who lived in Italy in the 16th century? He married a very young De Medici girl(for 14 is very young, no?), who lived only three years, and died under suspicious circumstances — poison was suspected. That's her portrait at the top of the post. And while the De Medici family is now considered an old and venerable Italian family, Alfonso II was from an older and more highly ranked lineage. Alfonso was descended from royalty, as was his second wife.

Second. About the form of the poem. You may not have noticed, but it is written entirely in rhymed couplets, using iambic pentameter. If you didn't notice, or at least not immediately, it's because Browning didn't write using end-stopped couplets (where the natural break falls at the end of every line). Rather, he used enjambment, a word taken from the French (meaning "stepping over"). It is the opposite of an end-stop, and is sometimes called a "run on" line, because to get the sense or meaning of the particular line, you must move on to the next bit of punctuation.

Finally, if you want to see an even more twisted dramatic monologue by Browning, do check out "Porphyria's Lover", in which the speaker ultimately proves to be insane. "Porphyria's Lover" is dated six years earlier than "My Last Duchess," and is therefore just before the start of Queen Victoria's reign, at a time when societal standards were shifting towards repressiveness, but not in the heydey of Victorian principles, which didn't occur until much later in the century. Porphyria is the disease which is believed to have caused the madness of King George III and of Vincent Van Gogh — symptoms include hallucination, paranoia, depression and more — and yet, Browning would have known none of that when he crafted his poem about a man in love with with a woman named Porphyria, which manages to equate love and madness.

The Poison Diaries
Author: Colin Stimpson, Duchess of Northumberland, Jane
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
ISBN-10: 0810993147
ISBN-13: 978-0810993143


The Poison Diaries is one of those books that you can’t help gazing at again and again. Story aside, the book is gorgeous. Rich, pastel like drawings that cover every inch of the page make it captivatingly sumptuous with all the style of an old-fashioned, Victorian herbal.

Each plant is lovingly drawn in great depth and detail and the book appears to be a kind of field guide to the plants in a garden as you first flip through it. Then you start to notice that the plants have almost human characteristics that they appear to be not only alive, but also malevolent. My first reaction was to stop flipping through it and start back at the beginning.

The story unfolds as darkly gothic as something from out of Lovecraft. The story is of an orphaned boy named Weed who works in his cruel master’s poison garden tending to the plants. He discovers that he can hear the plants talking and they him.

The plants are evil creatures who adore telling tales of the manner in which they kill. They goad Weed and try and encourage him to kill his master, glorifying murder and offering justification. He refuses to go along with them until one day he finds that his only friend and true love Marigold has experimented with one of the poisons and dies. With Marigold’s death, Weed unravels, sinking into a madness that the plants feast on and use to control him into doing what they want which is to kill.

I was completely caught up in the story even though I tend to shy away from very violent books and this is violent make no mistake about this. It is violent and graphically so. Still, the story is a good one, riveting though chilling. I have a feeling there will be more stories about Weed and his plants in the future or at least there should be given that the book left me wanting more.

I’m fascinated by the fact that the author was once a Disney animator. I could completely see this story animated although certainly not for children. It would make a very dark, very interesting film I think. The Poison Diaries comes highly recommended.

Book Description from the publisher:

This truly gothic tale—a “facsimile” of Weed’s journal found at Alnwick Castle, in England—is not only a story of the battle between good and evil, but an educational parable of the curative and lethal properties of plants.

Weed—an orphan boy who apprentices with an evil old apothecary—is both used and abused. His journal is part botanical workbook and part diary of his own relationship with poisonous plants.

Weed discovers that he is one of the few people whom the plants talk to, and they try to persuade him that, with their help, his master can easily be disposed of. Although he refuses at first, after Weed’s first love, Marigold, experiments with the poisons and dies, he is pushed over the edge and plots to kill his master with a taste of his own evil medicine.

Each chapter of the story begins with Weed’s botanical notes: a plant’s appearance and properties, where it is found, how it should be cared for, the most poisonous parts, and how poison is extracted and administered. Accompanied by Weed’s sketches of the plants in their natural form, his diary also reveals the “real” personalities of the plants.

About the Author
Jane, Duchess of Northumberland has long researched poison gardens. She is responsible for creating the Poison Garden at Alnwick Gardens in England, which opened in 2004 to worldwide acclaim. The Poison Garden is the culmination of her life’s goal to teach children and adults alike the curative and lethal properties of poisonous plants. Colin Stimpson worked as an animator at Steven Spielberg’s Amblimation studio in London and then at Disney Feature Animation in California.

What a find! I recently stopped by an estate sale and found this 1890's Ladies Home Journal filled with victorian illustrations and articles.

Good Morning All:

I have another one of those busy days ahead. Lots of logistics and driving involved. Neither of which I am looking forward to.

I did manage to list two of my ACEO collage Prints in My Etsy Shop, as I didn't list anything yesterday:

The Guardian

This ACEO is the very first in an on-going series called "The Guardian Series". This is the one that started it all.


Creepy Ghost Boy

I must say that the print above, "Creepy Ghost Boy" really does send chills up and down my spine. I collaged him very simply as I wanted the original look of his image to carry the piece. I did nothing to enhance him or make him creepier. I don't know who he was or what his story was. I just know that this photo gave me a spooky feeling the moment I laid eyes upon it. I don't know why he has such a look on his face nor do I know why he was bald. Needless to say, the original photo stays well put at the bottom of a box of vintage photos. I have not looked at the original photo since putting it away.

I'll leave you to take a gander at these collage prints as I am out the door in one hour.

Hope that you all have a lovely and productive day.

Until Tomorrow:
Kim
Garden Painter Art
gnarly-dolls
Kim's Kandid Kamera

Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars: The Fall of the Amazing Zalindas
Authors: Tracy Mack and Michael Citrin
Illustrator: Greg Ruth
Publisher: Orchard Books
ISBN-10: 0439828368
ISBN-13: 978-0439828369

The Fall of the Amazing Zalindas is the first in the proposed Baker Street Irregulars new series from Scholastic and I think it’s a great start. It begins with three tightrope walkers falling to their deaths in a London Circus and introduces the gang of street urchins that helps the great Sherlock Holmes in his crime solving.

Holmes has another case involving a missing and very valuable book and while he and Watson are solving other leads, the Irregulars, led by Wiggins and Ozzie get down to business with the circus folk.

The boys are all interesting and colorful characters with different stories and strengths. Ozzie in particular has quite a bit of depth and color. He’s the sick one of the bunch and very frail but has a razor sharp memory and an uncanny ability for copying documents. Wiggins is the leader and he’s the protective papa of the bunch always looking out for the others. I expect we'll find out more about the others in future books.

Besides the boys, there is the wonderful character of Pilar whom they meet in the circus. Pilar is a Spanish gypsy girl (fortune-tellers daughter) and seems to be able to genuinely see the future while going into a trance. She adds a dash of spice to the gaggle of boys.

The Fall of the Amazing Zalindas is full of details, reads like a casebook and has fine illustrations which give the book a good flavor. There’s Cockney slang, a glimpse of what life was like for the poor children of that time. It has a old style Victorian feel to it which gives the book a sense of authenticity.

Both boys and girls will love the book for its sense of fun and adventure. I’m looking forward to the next in the series.

The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle

by Catherine Webb

When youthful thief Tess breaks into the house of Horatio Lyle, she gets more than she bargained for. Horatio is an inventor and scientist, and his house is full of gadgets, some of which are very effective at trapping would-be thieves. Horatio agrees not to turn Tess in to the police if she agrees to be his assistant for a week.

Horatio is also a special constable, and he's called into duty when a supposedly impenetrable vault at the Bank of England is broken into. Among the items taken was one of little value but "cultural significance": the Fuyun Plate. Lyle is commissioned by Lord Lincoln, personal aide to Queen Victoria, to recover it. Tess accompanies him to investigate the crime. The two are also accompanied by Thomas Elwick, whose father Lord Elwick was responsible for keeping the Fuyun Plate safe and whose vault was the one broken into.

As Lyle, Tess, and Thomas get deeper into the investigation, they discover that there is more to the mystery than they are being told. The Fuyun Plate is an object of power, and an ancient race known as the Tseiqin is trying to recover the plate for their own purposes. The Tseiqin are powerful beings, but their power is limited by iron. With the plate, their power will have no limits and they can rule the world and free it from the burgeoning industrial revolution, which they abhor. Lyle, Tess, and Thomas have only their wits, and Lyle's inventions, to stand against these powerful beings.

I first read Horatio Lyle for the Cybils, and I had to read it rather quickly because I had a lot of books to get through. This is such a rich and complex book that I didn't think a review based on a quick reading would do it justice, so I decided to read it again and take my time with it prior to reviewing it. Some books are just as good the second time around, and some aren't. A rare few books get better on a second reading; The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle is one such book.

It's a treat worth savoring, especially for anyone who loves words and language. The descriptions are rich and poetic, yet they don't interfere with the flow of an exciting and suspenseful story. Webb has a masterful command of the English language. She also writes with a wonderfully understated wit and sense of irony; the book is peppered with pithy social commentary.

The characters are fascinating and delightful, starting with Lyle himself. the obvious comparison is to Sherlock Holmes, and indeed, there are some obvious similarities here. Lyle shares Holmes deductive powers and interest in science, but his personality is more human, although he does have a touch of Holmes' arrogance about his own abilities. Tess and Thomas are much more interesting sidekicks than Watson; Tess in particular is quite likeable. Even the minor characters are well-drawn.

The many details of the setting give the reader an amazing sense of the Victorian era. I don't know enough about the Victorian era to know how accurate it is, but it certainly has verisimilitude. (I did some Googling and found out that Webb is a history student, so I suspect the historical details are accurate).

Given my glowing praise of the book, I just wanted to make a comment about why I didn't vote for it in the final vote for the Cybils shortlist. There were two overriding principles that we used in judging the Cybils nominees: literary merit and kid appeal. Were the books judged on literary merit alone, I would have voted for Horatio Lyle without hesitation. However, I worried that the complexity of language and plot would put off some teens. I think some teens will love that complexity, but others might find it too challenging. I opted to vote in the final vote for books that I thought had a wider kid (or teen) appeal. (I did vote for Horatio Lyle in an earlier vote).

The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle isn't published yet in the U.S., but you can buy it from Amazon.co.uk.