I'm remembering tonight how Ann Radcliffe said (rightly) after she and her husband had crossed a battlefield where thousands of horrifying deaths had occurred only recently:  it's not true that war ends when a peace or truce is declared. War carries on long after the first overt demands of those who win: lost forever people, maimed bodies, troubled ( Read more... )

Dear friends,

And loving the books all over again. For the more impersonal reasons I'm doing this, see Ellen and Jim have a blog two.

Today I realize the first thing most people would have done would be to explore what are the living Graham people, estate, executors, websites. I was at first astonished to discover that is most people's reaction. ( Read more... )

Dear Diary,

A photo of fall in Vermont a face-book friend sent:


( Read more... )

Dear friends and readers,

One of the comments I got on my blog yesterday prompts this companion blog: "The trick is to love who you are ... "

That was a generous thing to say, and it strikes me as true (a belated response as I thought about it a little). I like the suggestion for a way into writing a memoir and maybe sometime in the 20 or so years ( Read more... )

Dear friends and readers,

I first began this thinking about what do with my summer on May 13; that was the day before I proctored my second and last final; I sent in the grades on May 16; and I wrote again that my problem was partly solved on May 18 when I discovered that my essay on Trollope film adaptations had been published in close to its ( Read more... )

Dear friends and readers,

In two days teaching is done. What is the hard thing for me -- though paradoxically I often enjoy it, am exhilarated, it's a strain, an ordeal -- will be over until very late August. And then just one section for the fall, one I've taught many times before. The admiral used to insist it was not over until he finished the ( Read more... )

Dear friends,

I'm using this blog to say to others and myself what are my plans for my website immediately and for attempts at publication over the next few months. It's a sort of form of reminder and to encourage myself; often at night I don't just don't do what I said to myself I would, I forget what I intended.

So, first in conjunction with my ( Read more... )

Dear friends and readers,

What can I better write about under Reveries under the Sign of Austen than a book which is itself a series of extended brilliant reveries?  Collins's Rambles Beyond Railways, about his walk with a friend (his illustrator) through a place no one goes to, is an informative delightful and serious travel book all at once.  ( Read more... )