Am a bit miffed to discover that I became a member of the National Trust just a bit too late to qualify for a vote in the forthcoming Council election. Sigh.
Though looking through the candidates' manifestos, there were some I was slightly side-eying for the possible dog-whistles about tradition, but most of them did at least indicate long ( Read more... )

Came across this a couple of weeks ago:
A master of self-promotion: letters reveal how Philip Roth ‘hustled’ for prizes: Professor Jacques Berlinerblau, who studied the correspondence while writing a book about Roth, was surprised by how pushy the author was and by his wheeler-dealing with friends and colleagues from the worlds of publishing, ( Read more... )

I saved, or thought I had, a couple of Twitter threads anent the role of publishing in the formation of the literary canon (in the other browser), only one of which actually appears in my tabs and turns out to be from last year.
But anyway, that had me thinking that well yes and well no, and what about V Woolf self-publishing by setting type ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished A Bite of the Apple: and, okay, I see there did have to be a fair amount in there about the practicalities of publishing and the various decisions that were made and compromises that had to be borne with; and that if it had not been Virago the reporting would not have been heavily leaning on the 'cat-fighting' stereotypes when ( Read more... )

What I read
Well, I think I've come to the end of the Antonia Fraser Jemima Shore binge - there are a couple of volumes of short stories, at least one of which I think I have somewhere, but I'm not madly bothered. I finished Your Royal Hostage, read The Cavalier Case (Jemima Shore, #7) (1990) and Political Death (Jemima Shore #8) (1994). Am still ( Read more... )

Well, this is exasperating/depressing: this article demonstrates that biographies about women who meet Wikipedia’s criteria for inclusion are more frequently considered non-notable and nominated for deletion compared to men’s biographies: On March 7, 2014, a biography for Donna Strickland, the physicist who invented a technology used by all the ( Read more... )

[A] mature literary culture is diverse, inclusive, and deep. It’s a culture that includes works of writerly brilliance and works that speak to the circumstances of their readers’ lives or that exist simply to entertain and provide pleasurable escapism. What difference does it make, one might ask, whether a mystery features a gay protagonist or a ( Read more... )

What I read
The Laurie Colwin streak continued with Happy All The Time (1978), which I still love inordinately, and A Big Storm Knocked It Over (1993). And then I thought I might pause a little - still one novel and a couple of volumes of short stories to go, I think, plus the two Home Cooking volumes. She does that thing which is similar to what ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Hush Money - hmmmmm. I'd forgotten or erased the number of dodgy conniving broads Spenser is forced to encounter in the course of his investigations. On the other hand the one in this one who at first seems to be faking being stalked for attention, is really being stalked; that doesn't, however, really give her a pass on ( Read more... )

This sounds fascinating, but I am aghast at the price (though it's par for the course for that particular academic press): Ryan Hanley. Beyond Slavery and Abolition: Black British Writing, c.1770-1830: 'the Royal Historical Society deemed Beyond Slavery and Abolition worthy of its annual Whitfield Prize, an award that this novel work most ( Read more... )