Hi, folks!
It’s almost time for another of my favourite reading events: Victober is a month-long readathon hosted by Kate, Katie, and Lucy, where we try to read as much Victorian literature as we can in the month of October. By “Victorial Lit” the hosts understand any book published from 1837 to 1901 in the UK. The hosts usually set some prompts or challenges to inspire our reading, and they also have a Goodreads group, where, among other things, we can discuss our choices and get book recommendations.
I will list my choices for each prompt, as well as some recommendations. As usual, some of my R.I.P. books will overlap with this event:
—Prompts—
1. Katie’s: Read a Victorian book that equates to your favourite modern genre
I don’t have a favourite genre as such, so I will simply list some options & choose later (some of these books can also fit more than one category):
- Nonfiction:
- TBR: Cassandra, by Florence Nightingale (1852)
- Recommendations: Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings by George Eliot, ed. Nicholas Warren (1990)
- Satire:
- TBR: Red Pottage, by Mary Cholmondeley (1899)
- Recommendation: Belinda, by Rhoda Broughton (1883) & Miss Marjoribanks, by Margaret Oliphant (1866)
- Adventure:
- TBR: Her Father’s Name, by Florence Marryat (1876)
- Recommendation: Jill, by Amy Dillwyn (1884)
- Feminism and gender roles:
- TBR: The Rebel of the Family, by Eliza Lynn Linton (1880)
- Recommendations: Hester, by Margaret Oliphant (1883) & A Struggle for Fame, by Charlotte Riddell (1883)
- Poetry:
- TBR: My Ladys Soul: The Poems of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, ed. Serena Trowbridge (2018, posthumous)
- Recommendation: Goblin Market and Other Poems, by Christina Rossetti (1862) & Aurora Leigh, by Elizabet Barret Browning (1856)
- Coming of age:
- TBR: The History of Sir Richard Calmady, by Lucas Malet (1901)
- Recommendation: The Beth Book, by Sarah Grand (1897)
- Romance:
- TBR: The Romance of a Shop, by Amy Levy (1888)
- Recommendation: North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell (1854 – 1855)
- Gothic:
- TBR: A Phantom Lover by Vernon Lee (1886)
- Recommendations: The Blood of the Vampire, by Florence Marryat (1897) & Agnes Grey, by Anne Brontë (1847)
- Children’s books:
- TBR: Mrs. Overtheway’s Remembrances, by Juliana Horatia Ewing (1869)
- Recommendation: The Runaway, by Elizabeth Anna Hart (1872)
- Travel writing:
- TBR: A Thousand Miles Up the Nile, by Amelia B. Edwards (1877)
- Short stories:
- TBR: The Virago Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, edited by Richard Dalby (1988)
- Recommendation: Gothic Tales, by Elizabeth Gaskell, ed. Laura Kranzler (2000)
2. Lucy’s challenge: Read a Victorian diary or collection of letters
- TBR: The Brontës: A Life in Letters by Juliet Barker (1997)
- Recommendation: The Journals of George Eliot, ed. Margaret Harris and Judith Johnston (1999) & Jane Carlyle: Newly Selected Letters, by Jane Welsh Carlyle, edited by Kenneth J Fielding & David R Sorensen (2004)
3. Kate’s challenge: Read a new to you book and/or short story by a favourite Victorian author
- TBR: Commonplace and Other Short Stories, by Christina Rossetti (1870)
- Recommendation: Gondal’s Queen: A Novel in Verse, by Emily Brontë, ed. Fannie E. Ratchford (1955)
4. Readers’ challenge: Read a Victorian book from a previous Victober TBR that you didn’t get to, or one you’ve been meaning to read for ages
- TBR (from my previous Victober TBR): Keynotes and Discords, by George Egerton (pen name of Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright, 1893/1894)
5. Group readalong: Shirley by Charlotte Brontë (1849)
Finally, some nonfiction books I recommend:
- A Secret Sisterhood: The Literary Friendships of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf by Emily Midorikawa and Emma Claire Sweeney (2017)
- Victorian Ghosts in the Noontide: Women Writers and the Supernatural, by Vanessa D. Dickerson (1996)
- Ambitious Heights: Writing, Friendship, Love: The Jewsbury Sisters, Felicia Hemans, and Jane Welsh Carlyle, by Norma Clarke (1990)
- Sara Coleridge, A Victorian Daughter: Her Life and Essays, by Bradford Keyes Mudge (1989, biography)
And that’s all for now, folks! As L.M. Montgomery writes in Anne of Green Gables, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers”. What will you be reading? Tell me about it. 🙂
Yours truly,
J.
the [blank] garden 
Those are some great books! I am currently considering going back even further than the Victorians and reading Sir Walter Scott….
LikeLike
Thank you, Karen! Victorian books are comfort reads for me, so I am looking forward to reading my list. What are you planning to read by Sir Walter Scott? 🙂
LikeLike
Possibly starting at the beginning with Waverley… 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi! There are endless victorian classics out there I have never heard of! I am quite interested in reading that book by Amy Levy that you mentioned! And I have only read The Runaway by Elizabeth Hart on your list! Thanks!
LikeLike
Thank you, Sarah! I’ve heard good things about Romance of a Shop, so I am looking forward to it! Are you going to make a Victober TBR list? I am always curious to peruse other people’s lists! 🙂
LikeLike
Hi Juliana, I’ve never made a Victober TBR list before! That sounds interesting! But I could only read 2-3 books at best each month so perhaps I’d make an all-year-round Victorian TBR 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
A year of Victober is even better! 🙂 Happy reading!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Also, do you get the physical copies or do you read the works on project gutenberg?
LikeLike
Most of the books I get on ebook format, and I buy the physical copies of the ones I cannot find as ebooks (and of my favourites, after I read them :)). For the academic books or letter collections with multiple volumes, I use my local library. How do you get your books?
LikeLike
I don’t have a kindle so I always get physical copies. I always get them on bookdepository because the local bookshops around me don’t have the English books I want to acquire. I prefer Oxford World’s Classics because it has the best font and introductory/explanatory notes. I lately heard of Broadview Press; I know there are many unheard-of Victorian classics published by Broadview Press (including Romance of a Shop :)) . I sometimes read the classics on Project Gutenberg, especially the ones by Wilkie Collins. I always admire the choices of books you read. Have fun in Victober!
LikeLiked by 1 person
By the way we need to analyse a short story (Lilies) by Ru Zhijuan for A-level Chinese Literature. But that was a long time ago!
LikeLike
Did you enjoy Lilies? I haven’t read this story, but I loved the one I read by her! I wish she were better known here and more of her stories were translated to English!
LikeLike
Yes, it is comparatively short relating to her other stories. It emphasizes on the purity and comradeship during WWII. The other test question apart from Lilies is a satirical short story by Wang Meng about a meeting before the tempest (cultural revolution), written in around 1980. So we analysed and compared the two short stories in the exam! How did you come across her?
LikeLiked by 1 person
oh Sorry I know now. Just looked at your post again. Alright! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m thinking of reading Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte Bronte. It’s a bit intimidating though, lots of pages and small type! Have you read it?
LikeLike