Back from the Grave
It's been so long since I visited LJ that I had to think carefully about my password for a moment. Icy months of cold-shouldering the on-line world have given way to a thawing in relations. My own personal glasnost.
I've decided to go back on line, not to relate the humdrum details of my everyday life, I shall leave that to my paper diary. Instead I shall use it as a book journal.
Also I have learned that Aaron has an LJ which I would very much like to stickybeak, so if anyone has his username, I'd be grateful. Melbourne lives couldn't possibly be humdrum at all.
I've been going through a bit of a nineteenth century phase recently, reading an autobiography, a biography and a novel all concerning the period.
"As We Were" was written by EF Benson in 1930 when he was getting on a bit. It offers some fascinating views on Victorian life in the latter half of the era. His father was Archbishop of Canterbury, who first proposed to his future wife when she was 11 and he in his late 20s.
He also offers amusing anecdotes about Tennyson trying to tell his father a risque joke. He also writes about Oscar Wilde. He believes that Wilde's claim to posterity was actually helped by his imprisonment because until then people on the Continent had ignored his works, but afterwards he was championed abroad and his work went into many editions.
He also says that the version the public has of "De Profundis" is an extremely heavily editted version done by his lawyer. He cut out pages of raillings against a certain person, (Lord Douglas) whot dun him rong. Benson could not name Douglas directly because he was still alive when "As We Were" was published.
"William Holman Hunt: His Wives and Loves" is about my favourite Pre-Raphaelite painter whose life was more than somewhat interesting. He had an affair with one of his models, whom he rashly promised in writing to marry, unaware that she was sleeping with his best friend Rossetti and Lord Ranelagh as well. When he finally decided to marry a respectable girl, Fanny Waugh (What a name!) much blackmailling ensued before Annie Miller could be bought off.
Fanny died in childbirth only a year after the marriage, but ten years later Hunt married her youngest sister, Edith. She had fallen in love with him as a teenager and with Victorian persistence got her man when she was an elderly 29. They had to get married in Switzerland because marrying your deceased wife's sister was illegal in England.
PS This is the same Waugh family that gave us Evelyn and Alec Waugh, but not Steve.
To round things off nicely I have finally been reading "The Picture of Dorian Gray" which is just choke full of Wildean epigrams, which as it is written by him, is appropriate. It's so interesting, but quite densely written too so I only read a bit at a time because I start craving cucumber sandwiches and there are none to be had, not even for ready money.
I'm off to see what the goss is on other people's pages.
PS Also read "Stormbreaker" by A Horowitz this week. It's a fun junior James Bond so my boys will like it.
PPS Can't believe that the spellchecker doesn't have the word 'username' in it!
I've decided to go back on line, not to relate the humdrum details of my everyday life, I shall leave that to my paper diary. Instead I shall use it as a book journal.
Also I have learned that Aaron has an LJ which I would very much like to stickybeak, so if anyone has his username, I'd be grateful. Melbourne lives couldn't possibly be humdrum at all.
I've been going through a bit of a nineteenth century phase recently, reading an autobiography, a biography and a novel all concerning the period.
"As We Were" was written by EF Benson in 1930 when he was getting on a bit. It offers some fascinating views on Victorian life in the latter half of the era. His father was Archbishop of Canterbury, who first proposed to his future wife when she was 11 and he in his late 20s.
He also offers amusing anecdotes about Tennyson trying to tell his father a risque joke. He also writes about Oscar Wilde. He believes that Wilde's claim to posterity was actually helped by his imprisonment because until then people on the Continent had ignored his works, but afterwards he was championed abroad and his work went into many editions.
He also says that the version the public has of "De Profundis" is an extremely heavily editted version done by his lawyer. He cut out pages of raillings against a certain person, (Lord Douglas) whot dun him rong. Benson could not name Douglas directly because he was still alive when "As We Were" was published.
"William Holman Hunt: His Wives and Loves" is about my favourite Pre-Raphaelite painter whose life was more than somewhat interesting. He had an affair with one of his models, whom he rashly promised in writing to marry, unaware that she was sleeping with his best friend Rossetti and Lord Ranelagh as well. When he finally decided to marry a respectable girl, Fanny Waugh (What a name!) much blackmailling ensued before Annie Miller could be bought off.
Fanny died in childbirth only a year after the marriage, but ten years later Hunt married her youngest sister, Edith. She had fallen in love with him as a teenager and with Victorian persistence got her man when she was an elderly 29. They had to get married in Switzerland because marrying your deceased wife's sister was illegal in England.
PS This is the same Waugh family that gave us Evelyn and Alec Waugh, but not Steve.
To round things off nicely I have finally been reading "The Picture of Dorian Gray" which is just choke full of Wildean epigrams, which as it is written by him, is appropriate. It's so interesting, but quite densely written too so I only read a bit at a time because I start craving cucumber sandwiches and there are none to be had, not even for ready money.
I'm off to see what the goss is on other people's pages.
PS Also read "Stormbreaker" by A Horowitz this week. It's a fun junior James Bond so my boys will like it.
PPS Can't believe that the spellchecker doesn't have the word 'username' in it!