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)
    • Options: The Life of Charlotte Brontë, by Elizabeth Gaskell (1857)
  • Recommendations: Selected Essays, Poems and Other Writings by George Eliot, ed. Nicholas Warren (1990); Selected Writings by Thomas Carlyle, ed. Alan Shelston (1980); Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold, ed. Jane Garnett (1869)

•  Satire:
  • TBR: Red Pottage, by Mary Cholmondeley (1899)
    • Options: The semi-detached house & The semi-detached couple, by Emily Eden (1860)
  • Recommendation: Belinda, by Rhoda Broughton (1883) & Miss Marjoribanks, by Margaret Oliphant (1866)

• Adventure:
  • TBR: Her Father’s Name, by Florence Marryat (1876)
    • Options: The Story of Lilly Dawson, by Catherine Crowe (1847)
  • Recommendation: Jill, by Amy Dillwyn (1884)

• Feminism and gender roles:
  • TBR: The Rebel of the Family, by Eliza Lynn Linton (1880)
    • Options: The Heavenly Twins, by Sarah Grand (1893); The Half-Sisters, by Geraldine Jewsbury (1848); Gloriana; or, the Revolution of 1900 by Lady Florence Dixie (1890)
  • 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)
    • Options: Complete Poems by Christina Rossetti, ed. Betty Flowers (2001, posthumous); Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology, ed. Angela Leighton and Margaret Reynolds (1995)
  • 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)
    • Other options: Miss Miles: Or, a Tale of Yorkshire Life 60 Years Ago, by Mary Taylor (1890); Cherry & Violet, by Anne Manning (1853); Grania: The Story of an Island, by Emily Lawless (1892)
  • Recommendation: The Beth Book, by Sarah Grand (1897)

• Romance:
  • TBR: The Romance of a Shop, by Amy Levy (1888)
    • Other options: The Real Charlotte, Edith Somerville & Martin Ross (1894); The Story of a Marriage, by Louisa Baldwin (as Mrs. Alfred Baldwin, 1895); A Burglary: Or, Unconscious Influence, by Amy Dillwyn (1883); Cometh Up As a Flower, by Rhoda Broughton (1867); Wife in Name Only, by Charlotte M. Brame (1883)
  • Recommendation: North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell (1854 – 1855) & Zoe, by Geraldine Jewsbury (1845)

• Gothic:
  • TBR: A Phantom Lover by Vernon Lee (1886)
    • Other options: The Sorrows of Satan, by Marie Corelli (1895); East Lynne, by Mrs. Henry Wood (1861)
  • 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)
    • Options: Travels in West Africa by Mary Kingsley (1897)
  • Recommendation: Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, by Isabella Lucy Bird (1885)

• Short stories:
  • TBR: Avenging Angels: Ghost Stories by Victorian Women Writers, ed. Melissa Edmundson (2018)
    • Options: The Virago Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, edited by Richard Dalby (1988); All Saints’ Eve, by Amelia B. Edwards (1876); Hauntings and Other Fantastic Tales, by Vernon Lee (1890); The Shadow on the Blind and Other Stories, by Louisa Baldwin (1895); Weird Stories, by Charlotte Riddell (1882); Witch Stories, by Eliza Lynn Linton (1861); Twilight Stories, by Rhoda Broughton (1873)
  • Recommendation: Gothic Tales, by Elizabeth Gaskell, ed. Laura Kranzler (2000)

2. Lucy’s challenge: Read a Victorian diary or collection of letters

• TBR: Selections from George Eliot’s Letters, ed. Gordon S. Haight (1985)
  • Options: The George Eliot Letters, 9 vols., ed. Gordon S. Haight (1954-1978); The Letters of Christina Rossetti, 4 vols., ed. Antony H. Harrison (1997-2004); The Diaries of Hannah Cullwick, Victorian Maidservant, ed. Autumn Stanley (1984); The Brontës: A Life in Letters by Juliet Barker (1997); Selected Letters of Charlotte Brontë, ed. Margaret Smith (2007); The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell, ed. J.A.V. Chapple and Arthur Pollard (1967); Ever Yours, Florence Nightingale: Selected Letters, ed. Martha Vicinus and Bea Nergaard (1989)
• 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)
  • Options: The Clever Woman of the Family, by Charlotte Mary Yonge (1865); Moths, by Ouida (pen name of Maria Louise Ramé, 1880)

5. Group readalong: Shirley by Charlotte Brontë (1849)

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Finally, some nonfiction book I may read alongside the Victorian books:

• Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth, by Nina Auerbach (1982)
• Victorian Women Poets: Writing Against the Heart, by Angela Leighton (1992)
• Women’s Ghost Literature in Nineteenth-Century Britain, by Melissa Edmundson Makala (2013)
• God Between Their Lips: Desire Between Women in Irigaray, Brontë, and Eliot, by Kathryn Bond Stockton (1994)
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning: A Biography, by Margaret Forster (1988)
• Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England, by Sharon Marcus (2007)
• Florence Nightingale: The Woman and Her Legend, by Mark Bostridge (2020)
• Recommendations: 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)

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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.

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