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major writers, biographical notes, and literary criticism

major writers, biographical notes, and literary criticism

Lord Jim – a study guide

November 8, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Lord Jim (1900) explores the tensions of European colonialism and its role in the East Indies in the late nineteenth century. Although the principal characters are English, the presence of Dutch, French, and German characters spreads the responsibility of ideological and cultural dominance during the highpoint of imperialism, and it does so over a geographic area which stretches from Aden in the Arabian Sea to Manila in the Philippines. It’s also a very dramatic story that explores one of Conrad’s favourite themes – moral redemption via suffering and renunciation.

Joseph Conrad - portrait

Joseph Conrad


Lord Jim – critical commentary

Narrative method

Lord Jim was the first of Conrad’s full length novels to feature as principal narrator Charles Marlow, the former sea captain. Marlow assembles the facts of the story from a number of different sources – from people he knows, and from information passed on to him from others. The details are then relayed to a group of people Marlow is addressing – and hence to the reader. However, they are not relayed in chronological order but re-arranged to create maximum dramatic effect.

Marlow knows the outcome of the whole story from the outset, and from times to time he offers tantalising glimpses into what is to come. But for the main part he withholds crucial items of information, which creates both dramatic tension and a sense of grim expectancy.

The narrative comprises a radically dislocated series of events. A conventional opening relates Jim’s career as chief mate of the Patna up to the very point of its accident in the Arabian Sea. But instead of describing the dramatic events of the Patna’s fate and the scandalous behaviour of its crew, the story suddenly jumps forward to the judicial inquest, and is then taken over by Marlow who reminisces about Jim from a point in time long after the events of the novel have concluded.

Marlow intersperses the narrative with sketches of other characters and accounts of other events, and it is only very gradually revealed that Jim has abandoned the Patna along with the other crew members. Thus the narrative expands and contracts in terms of the psychological interest with which Conrad imbues his characters. For instance the few moments that comprise Jim’s fears and misgivings as the ship is abandoned are stretched out over more than twenty pages, and the evening dinner at which Jim recounts these events to Marlow lasts more than fifty pages.

In common with his other novels narrated by Marlow (Heart of Darkness, Chance, and Youth) Conrad uses a literary sleight of hand to produce a narrative delivered by Marlow almost as if he were an eye-witness to events, even though he has only heard about them from the accounts of others. In the episode of the Patna‘s collision the narrative is actually passed back and forth between Jim (who tells Marlow what happened) and Marlow (who is relaying the story to his audience at a much later date).

“How long he stood stock-still by the hatch expecting every moment to feel the ship dip under his feet and the rush of water take him at the back and toss him like a chip, I cannot say. Not very long – two minutes perhaps.

Here is literary magic at work close to hand. Conrad simultaneously acknowledges uncertainty in the account of events (‘I cannot say …perhaps’) whilst giving the impression of honest accuracy (‘two minutes’).

The novel is as much about Marlow himself as the people whose story he tells. He is empathetic to Jim with very little reason to be so – except that he describes him in distinctly homo-erotic terms:

I looked at him. The red of his fair sunburnt complexion deepened suddenly under the down of his cheeks, invaded his forehead, spread to the roots of his curly hair. His ears became intensely crimson, and even the clear blue of his eyes was darkened many shades by the rush of blood to his head. His lips pouted a little, trembling as though he had been on the point of bursting into tears.

To an inattentive reader, Marlow appears to be describing Jim’s actions in the story (which he only knows about from Jim) but a great deal of the time he is imagining how Jim might have felt. He is appealing to his audience to empathise with Jim’s predicament in the drama he is reconstructing.

This is not unlike Marlow’s attitude to Kurtz in Heart of Darkness, where he is predisposed to Kurtz before he even meets him. He imagines the sort of person he must be and invests his actions with some sort of grandeur. We have no independent evidence by which to judge – only what Marlow tells us.

The narrative chain

The first part of the novel starts out with the story reaching readers in what appears to be a conventional third person omniscient narrative mode. We are given Jim’s background history and taken through his participation in the lead up to the Patna incident. But then an unnamed narrator reveals himself as a colleague of Marlow’s – to whom he hands over the narrative.

The story then purports to be Marlow relating events to a group of people who sit smoking in semi-darkness – a device Conrad was to use again in Heart of Darkness written two years later. The next three-quarters of the book is Marlow’s account of events. Jim tells him what happened on the Patna and then passes on the news of his subsequent life on future occasions when Marlow visits him a his outpost in Patusan.

But then the latter part of the novel is narrated in a manner which puts a great strain on any reader’s credulity. Marlow leaves Jim for the last time with a quarter of the novel still to go, never to see him again. So how does the story reach us?

The unnamed outer narrator (one of Marlow’s audience) tells us that just one of the listening group (described at the ‘privileged reader’) has the remainder of the story revealed to him. The information comes in the form of documents and an explanatory letter sent to him by Marlow. The principal document is a report written by Marlow of an account offeredto him by a dying man – Gentleman Brown.

There are all sorts of logical gaps, inconsistencies, and problems of credibility attached to this ending, and it must be said that this is not the only novel of Conrad’s that gave him difficulties in shaping a satisfactory conclusion to his story.

For instance, the concluding document details the conflict between Jim and Gentleman Brown as the warring groups battle against each other for dominance in Patusan. Brown survives the conflict and escapes, only to encounter illness and near death in the Indian Ocean. Marlow is providentially on hand as he dies, and so hears Brown’s account of the final conflict – which he of course relays as if he were a first-hand witness to the events.

But Brown escapes before the final scenes of Jim’s moral collapse and suicide, so Conrad rather implausibly suggests that these events were relayed to Marlow by Tamb’ Itam – Jim’s loyal bodyguard and servant. This is a man who earlier in the novel could barely speak English.

More importantly, even if we assume that the outer narrator, the ‘privileged reader’ of the documents and Marlow are all present at the two hundred and fifty page meeting which delivers the first three quarters of the narrative – we are not told how the ‘privileged reader’ passes on the story to the outer narrator.

It seems to me that Conrad simply creates problems for himself which could have been avoided. A simple third person omniscient narrative mode would have been a lot easier for delivering the story – or even a narrative recounted by Marlow with fewer contortions of plot and coincidence.

It is often claimed that this complex narrative mode allowed Conrad to show events and characters from multiple perspectives. But the fact is that almost everything we know – characters, setting, and events – are filtered through Marlow’s consciousness. He describes characters – and tells us what to think about them through both conventional description and layer upon layer of philosophising about the moral nature of man (rarely woman) in society.

It also has to be said that Conrad makes very little effort to put any distance between himself as autheor and Marlow as his fictional narrator. Readers have every reason to feel that Marlow is a mouthpiece for Conrad. His opinions are almost indistinguishable from those that Conrad records in his prefaces and notebooks. And Marlow slips repeatedly between the role of first person and third person omniscient narrator. It’s as if Conrad gets carried away with his own (admittedly gripping) story, and forgets the logic of the narrative structures he has built for himself.

The imperialist legacy

It should be noted that despite all of the high-minded sermonising and quasi-philosophic reflections that Conrad puts into Marlow’s words, the novel also contains many of the clichés of English Imperialism, handed to us straight from King Solomon’s Mines. The protagonist Jim is a young, handsome, blue-eyed, curly haired Billy Budd figure who dresses all in white. The natives eventually worship him as a figure of unimpeachable correctness. A mixed-race girl falls in love with him, and he even has a native guard who is so selflessly loyal to Jim that he even pretends to sleep so that he will not worry his master.


Lord Jim – study resources

Lord Jim Lord Jim – Oxford World’s Classics – Amazon UK

Lord Jim Lord Jim – Oxford World’s Classics – Amazon US

Lord Jim Lord Jim – Penguin Modern Classics – Amazon UK

Lord Jim Lord Jim – Penguin Modern Classics – Amazon US

Lord Jim Lord Jim – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Lord Jim Lord Jim – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Lord Jim Lord Jim – Everyman Library Classics – Amazon UK

Lord Jim Lord Jim – Everyman Library Classics – Amazon US

Lord Jim Lord Jim – Norton Critical Editions – Amazon UK

Lord Jim Lord Jim – Cliffs Notes – Amazon UK

Lord Jim Lord Jim – York Notes – Amazon UK

Lord Jim Lord Jim – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Lord Jim Lord Jim – AudioBook MP3 unabridged – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Red button Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Red button Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Pointer Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Pointer Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

Pointer Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Red button Joseph Conrad at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Lord Jim


Lord Jim – plot summary

Lord JimJim is a young English sailor fired with romantic dreams of heroism in the face of danger. On a sea voyage transporting pilgrims from Singapore to Jeddah in the Red Sea, his ship the Patna is involved in a collision. Thinking that the vessel is sinking, the crew (including Jim) abandon ship. However, the ship does not sink, but is rescued by a French boat and towed to safety. There is an official inquest into the incident in Bombay, before which the German captain absconds and at which Jim is stripped of his seaman’s certificate in dishonour.

Marlow meets Jim at the inquest and sympathises with his situation. Understanding Jim’s wish to remove himself from the disgrace, Marlow finds him work in a remote location. Jim is successful, but when a reminder of the Patna affair resurfaces, Jim walks away from his position. This pattern of events is repeated, with Jim retreating further and further from civilization.

He eventually is given a job as trading post chief by Stein, a friend of Marlow’s, and Jim finds himself in Patusan, a remote location in the East Indies. At first he is regarded suspiciously by the natives, but he makes himself popular by overthrowing a local war lord. He takes a common-law wife, and after two or three years feels that he has successfully reclaimed his self-respect and thrown off the shame of the Patna incident.

However, ‘Gentleman’ Brown a criminal marauding Englishman who has stolen a ship and run short of supplies, sails into Patusan and decides to plunder the natives at whatever the cost. He attacks the natives and sets up a temporary camp. Jim negotiates with him and persuades him to leave peacefully, so as to avoid further conflict. But he double-crosses Jim and attacks the natives again, killing the local chief’s son. Jim realises that he has betrayed the trust of the people who looked up to him, and he commits a form of suicide by allowing the local chief to shoot him.


Lord Jim – film version

FILM – Lord Jim (1965) – starring Peter O’Toole

Red button See reviews of the film at the Internet Movie Database


Principal characters
I an unnamed outer narrator who relays Marlow’s story
Charles Marlow a former sea captain, the principal narrator of events
Jim (James) a young English sailor, fired with notions of heroism (his surname is never revealed)
Fat German the cowardly captain of the Patna
Archie Ruthvel principal shipping master in Bombay
Captain Elliot master attendant in Bombay
Montague Brierly head of the Patna enquiry, a haughty naval assessor, captain of the Ossa, who commits suicide
Mr Jones chief officer of the Ossa
French Lieutenant gun boat officer who boards the stricken Patna
Chester seaman cum trader in Bombay with guano island scheme
Captain Robinson former pirate, his business partner
Denver rice mill owner in Rangoon to whom Marlow recommends Jim
Stein German trader and entomologist
Cornelius old cringing man, Jim’s predecessor in Patusan
Doramin Stein’s overweight ‘war comrade’ in Patusan – chief of the second regional power
Dain Waris Doramin’s brave son
Tunku Allang Rajah in Patusan
Sherif Ali robber baron war lord in Patusan
Jewel Jim’s mixed-race common-law wife, step-daughter of Cornelius
Tamb’ Itam Jim’s loyal native guard and servant
‘privileged reader’ an unnamed character to whom Marlow sends documents
‘Gentleman’ Brown ‘son of a baronet’ pirate and buccaneer

Biography


The Cambridge Companion to Joseph ConradThe Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.


Joseph Conrad - manuscript page

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness


Further reading

Red button Amar Acheraiou Joseph Conrad and the Reader, London: Macmillan, 2009.

Red button Jacques Berthoud, Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Red button Muriel Bradbrook, Joseph Conrad: Poland’s English Genius, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941

Red button Harold Bloom (ed), Joseph Conrad (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views, New Yoprk: Chelsea House Publishers, 2010

Red button Hillel M. Daleski , Joseph Conrad: The Way of Dispossession, London: Faber, 1977

Red button Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Red button Aaron Fogel, Coercion to Speak: Conrad’s Poetics of Dialogue, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1985

Red button John Dozier Gordon, Joseph Conrad: The Making of a Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1940

Red button Albert J. Guerard, Conrad the Novelist, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1958

Red button Robert Hampson, Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992

Red button Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Language and Fictional Self-Consciousness, London: Edward Arnold, 1979

Red button Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Narrative Technique and Ideological Commitment, London: Edward Arnold, 1990

Red button Jeremy Hawthorn, Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad, London: Continuum, 2007.

Red button Owen Knowles, The Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990

Red button Jakob Lothe, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008

Red button Gustav Morf, The Polish Shades and Ghosts of Joseph Conrad, New York: Astra, 1976

Red button Ross Murfin, Conrad Revisited: Essays for the Eighties, Tuscaloosa, Ala: University of Alabama Press, 1985

Red button Jeffery Myers, Joseph Conrad: A Biography, Cooper Square Publishers, 2001.

Red button Zdzislaw Najder, Joseph Conrad: A Life, Camden House, 2007.

Red button George A. Panichas, Joseph Conrad: His Moral Vision, Mercer University Press, 2005.

Red button John G. Peters, The Cambridge Introduction to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Red button James Phelan, Joseph Conrad: Voice, Sequence, History, Genre, Ohio State University Press, 2008.

Red button Edward Said, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1966

Red button Allan H. Simmons, Joseph Conrad: (Critical Issues), London: Macmillan, 2006.

Red button J.H. Stape, The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996

Red button John Stape, The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad, Arrow Books, 2008.

Red button Peter Villiers, Joseph Conrad: Master Mariner, Seafarer Books, 2006.

Red button Ian Watt, Conrad in the Nineteenth Century, London: Chatto and Windus, 1980

Red button Cedric Watts, Joseph Conrad: (Writers and their Work), London: Northcote House, 1994.


Joseph Conrad - writing table

Joseph Conrad’s writing table


Other novels by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad ChanceChance is the first of Conrad’s novels to achieve a wide commercial success, and one of the few to have a happy ending. It tells the story of Flora de Barral, the abandoned daughter of a bankrupt tycoon, and her long struggle to find happiness and dignity. He takes his techniques of weaving complex narratives to a challenging level here. His narrator Marlow is piecing together the story from a mixture of personal experience and conversations with other characters in the novel. At times it is difficult to remember who is saying what to whom. This is a work for advanced Conrad fans only. Make sure you have read some of the earlier works first, before tackling this one.
Joseph Conrad Buy the book from Amazon UK
Joseph Conrad Buy the book from Amazon US

The novels of Joseph Conrad - VictoryVictory (1915) is set in the legendary port of Surabaya and in an outpost of the Malayan archipelago. It is the story of Swedish recluse Axel Heyst, who rescues Lena, a young woman from a touring orchestra and runs off to live in remote seclusion, influenced by the pessimistic philosophy of his father. But he is pursued by two lying and scheming English gamblers, who believe he is concealing ill-gotten wealth. They corner him in his retreat, and despite the efforts of Lena to shield Heyst from their plans, there is a tragic confrontation which brings destruction into their island paradise.
Joseph Conrad Buy the book from Amazon UK
Joseph Conrad Buy the book from Amazon US

 


Joseph Conrad – web links

Joseph Conrad - tutorials Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Red button Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad - eBooks Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad - further reading Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad - adaptations Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Joseph Conrad - etexts Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

Joseph Conrad - journal The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

Conrad US journal The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Joseph Conrad - concordance Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

© Roy Johnson 2010


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Love Letters: Leonard Woolf and Trekkie Parsons

May 18, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Bloomsbury’s secret love affair

Everybody knows that Leonard Woolf nursed his wife Virginia Woolf through periods of mental and physical illness, right up to the point of her suicide in 1941. What is not so well known is that he did this at the same time as being a full time journalist and author, a Labour Party activist responsible for the development of the League of Nations, and a successful commercial publisher in charge of the Hogarth Press. Even less well known is the fact that within twelve months of his wife’s death he began a relationship with a woman which was to last for the rest of his life.

Love Letters: Leonard Woolf & Trekkie ParsonsNot that there was anything wrong with his forming a new relationship – but the woman happened to be married to someone else. She was Trekkie Parsons, an artist and book illustrator, and her second husband Ian Parsons eventually became Leonard Woolf’s business partner. The actual content of the letters is fairly inconsequential: arrangements for meeting; reflections on botanical matters; lots of endearments; the desire (on his part) for more contact; and occasional comments on their contemporaries. They had lots of shared interests – pet animals, horticulture, and even printing. He was after all an independent publisher, and she studied and practised all sorts of printing techniques.

Leonard is clearly the more enamoured: as a widower, living alone, he yearns for more time with her. But she warns against their relationship becoming passionate – using a form of words which would give anyone pause for thought: ‘I want you to love me you see – but not as an epidemic disease all covered in spots & then quite cured’.

When her husband was posted to France she went to live with Woolf at Monks House in Lewes (sleeping in Virginia Woolf’s old bed) – though it also has to be said that when Ian Parsons was demobbed in 1945 all three of them moved into the same house in London.

In fact for the near thirty years that their relationship existed, she split herself between the two men. She supported her husband in his business ventures and enjoyed their busy social life together. They were said to be a ‘well-oiled unit’. But she spent a large part of the working week with Leonard, and even went on holidays with him.

There is no evidence in the letters that her husband was at all worried about what was going on, but when Parsons started an affair of his own with his business partner Nora Smallwood, Trekkie was not impervious to jealousy.

The most amazing thing is that there is hardly a word in what they write to each other over a span of almost three decades about the oddity, ambiguity, or any tensions in their relationship. Even the footnotes remain silent on that score.

The question which anyone with an ounce of curiosity or a spoonful of blood in their veins will want to know is – was the relationship physically intimate? And the amazing thing is that there is not a jot of evidence either way so far as I could see – which makes it all the more curious.

The editing of the letters is quite scholarly. Whenever someone new is mentioned, an explanation of who they are is offered in a footnote. But there is little analysis or interpretation of events.

Leonard claimed that Trekkie was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He made her his executrix and principal legatee. And when his will was contested by members of his own family, these letters were adduced in court as evidence of merely a ‘literary and social friendship’. Moreover, Trekkie herself claimed (at the age of ninety) that the relationship had not been sexual.

If that is true, Leonard Woolf spent almost six decades devoted to two women, Virginia and Trekkie, with whom he had sexless relationships. It is no good going to his excellent Autobiography to discover more, because he is just as reserved about his private life there. One can only read and stand back, amazed at yet another facet of Bloomsbury life.

© Roy Johnson 2004

Leonard Woolf Love Letters Buy the book at Amazon UK

Leonard Woolf Love Letters Buy the book at Amazon US


Judith Adamson (editor), Love Letters: Leonard Woolf & Trekkie Parsons 1941-1968, London: Pimlico, 2002, pp.312, ISBN: 0712664734


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Lytton Strachey biography

September 22, 2009 by Roy Johnson

life, works, and loves of a literary bohemian

Lytton Strachey biographyLytton Strachey (1880-1932) was born at Clapham Common and raised at Lancaster Gate, in central London. He was the eleventh of thirteen children, to General Sir Richard Strachey (an engineer) and his wife Jane Grant. Though he spent some years at boarding schools, including Abbotsholme and Leamington College, he received much of his education at home. His mother took an interest in literature and politics, and Strachey met many of the leading writers and thinkers of the day when they came to visit Lady Strachey. His secondary education was completed at University College in Liverpool where he studied Latin, Greek, mathematics, and English literature and history. It was there that he met and was influenced by Walter Raleigh, a professor of English literature and well known biographer.

After failing to receive a scholarship to Oxford in 1899, Strachey decided to attend Cambridge where he developed many friendships which lasted the rest of his life. At Trinity College Cambridge he met Clive Bell, Thoby Stephen (Virginia Woolf’s brother) John Maynard Keynes, and Leonard Woolf.

Along with many other future members of the Bloomsbury Group, he was elected to the Apostles Society, and he also won the Chancellor’s medal for his poem, ‘Ely: An Ode’. In 1903 fellow Apostle G.E.Moore’s Principia Ethica was published, producing a profound effect on the aspiring intellectuals. The Principia became a rationalizing factor in loosening the repression of homosexual tendencies among the Apostles and in Trinity and King’s College as well.

Strachey completed his work at Cambridge with a thesis on Warren Hastings but failed to receive a Trinity fellowship. He returned to his parents’ home in Lancaster Gate and sought to support himself as a journalist. Much of his social life centred on the Thursday night ‘at-homes’ of the Stephenses – Thoby, Adrian, Vanessa Bell, and Virginia Woolf.

He contributed book and drama reviews to The Spectator magazine, published poetry, and wrote an important work of literary criticism, Landmarks in French Literature (1912). During the First World War, he was a conscientious objector, and spent much time with like-minded people such as Lady Ottoline Morrell and other members of the Bloomsbury Group.

In 1915 Strachey met Dora Carrington, a graduate of the Slade School of Art and the woman who devoted herself to him for the rest of his life. In 1917 Strachey and Carrington moved into a cottage in Tidmarsh, Oxfordshire, and continued to carry on with their separate personal lives. Carrington maintained a relationship with fellow artist Mark Gertler before marrying Ralph Partridge, and Strachey moved through a series of relationships with a series of men.

Eminent VictoriansHis first great success, and his most famous achievement, was Eminent Victorians (1918) a collection of four short biographies of Victorian heroes. With a dry wit, he exposed the human failings of his subjects and what he saw as the hypocrisy at the centre of Victorian morality. His portraits of Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and General Gordon changed perceptions of the Victorians for a whole generation.

This work was followed in the same style by Queen Victoria, a work which used elements of romantic fiction and melodrama to create a warm, humorous and very human portrait of an iconic figure. We see Victoria as a strong-willed child, as the 18-year-old girl queen, as a monarch, wife, mother and widow. Equally fascinating are her relationships with Peel, Gladstone and Disraeli, with her beloved Albert and her Highland servant John Brown, all of which show a different side of her staid, pious image.

Strachey’s literary style was becoming very popular and he began to achieve a measure of fame which allowed him to support himself and his household from the proceeds of his writing. In 1924 he purchased the lease to Ham Spray House and moved in along with Carrington and Ralph Partridge. He completed Elizabeth and Essex in 1928 and started editing The Greville Memoirs, a project which was completed posthumously by Ralph and Frances Partridge and Roger Fulford.

Though his frequent ill-health often made it difficult, Strachey enjoyed travelling and made several trips abroad between 1928 and 1931. One of these excursions is described very humorously in Gerald Brenan’s memoir, South from Granada. Late in 1931 he began to decline rapidly from an illness which doctors were unable to identify. He died January 21, 1932, of what was later found to be stomach cancer. His famous deathbed bon mot was: ‘If this is dying, then I don’t think much of it.’ Distraught at the loss of her soul-mate, Carrington made two attempts to commit suicide. The latter was successful when she borrowed a gun from her neighbour and shot herself.


The Letters of Lytton StracheyStrachey’s Letters This collection reveals the poignant love-affair between him and the painter Dora Carrington, plus his affairs with Roger Senhouse and his cousin Duncan Grant. He also wrote almost every day to Leonard Woolf on politics, literature, and life – and he correctly predicted to Maynard Keynes that their sexual proclivities and attitudes put them a hundred years ahead of their time. Includes new materials unknown to previous biographers, almost every item revealing Strachey as a witty, gossipy, and sparkling character.


Lytton Strachey biography


Bloomsbury Group – web links

Bloomsbury Group - web links Hogarth Press first editions
Annotated gallery of original first edition book jacket covers from the Hogarth Press, featuring designs by Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, and others.

Bloomsbury Group - web links The Omega Workshops
A brief history of Roger Fry’s experimental Omega Workshops, which had a lasting influence on interior design in post First World War Britain.

Bloomsbury Group - web links The Bloomsbury Group and War
An essay on the largely pacifist and internationalist stance taken by Bloomsbury Group members towards the First World War.

Bloomsbury Group web links Tate Gallery Archive Journeys: Bloomsbury
Mini web site featuring photos, paintings, a timeline, sub-sections on the Omega Workshops, Roger Fry, and Duncan Grant, and biographical notes.

Bloomsbury Group - web links Bloomsbury: Books, Art and Design
Exhibition of paintings, designs, and ceramics at Toronto University featuring Hogarth Press, Vanessa Bell, Dora Carrington, Quentin Bell, and Stephen Tomlin.

Bloomsbury Group - web links Blogging Woolf
A rich enthusiast site featuring news of events, exhibitions, new book reviews, relevant links, study resources, and anything related to Bloomsbury and Virginia Woolf

Bloomsbury Group - web links Hyper-Concordance to Virginia Woolf
Search the texts of all Woolf’s major works, and track down phrases, quotes, and even individual words in their original context.

Bloomsbury Group - web links A Mrs Dalloway Walk in London
An annotated description of Clarissa Dalloway’s walk from Westminster to Regent’s Park, with historical updates and a bibliography.

Bloomsbury Group - web links Women’s History Walk in Bloomsbury
Annotated tour of literary and political homes in Bloomsbury, including Gordon Square, University College, Bedford Square, Doughty Street, and Tavistock Square.

Bloomsbury Group - web links Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
News of events, regular bulletins, study materials, publications, and related links. Largely the work of Virginia Woolf specialist Stuart N. Clarke.

Bloomsbury Group - web links BBC Audio Essay – A Eulogy to Words
A charming sound recording of a BBC radio talk broadcast in 1937 – accompanied by a slideshow of photographs of Virginia Woolf.

Bloomsbury Group - web links A Family Photograph Albumn
Leslie Stephens’ collection of family photographs which became known as the Mausoleum Book, collected at Smith College – Massachusetts.

Bloomsbury Group - web links Bloomsbury at Duke University
A collection of book jacket covers, Fry’s Twelve Woodcuts, Strachey’s ‘Elizabeth and Essex’.

© Roy Johnson 2000-2014


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Lytton Strachey by Himself

July 19, 2009 by Roy Johnson

diaries, journals, essays, and personal fragments

Lytton Strachey is best known through his letters, a voluminous outpouring which he maintained throughout his life. But those were written largely to amuse the recipients. This book gathers together his diaries, which he wrote in solitude for himself. It also contains autobiographical fragments, some travel journals, and two essays which were delivered to the Bloomsbury Memoir Club, plus occasional writings from periods of his life ranging from childhood to his last days. After a scene-setting opening which describes life at his family home at Lancaster Gate, the first entry is the journal of a holiday in Gibraltar, Cairo, and Capetown.

Lytton Strachey by HimselfThen we get a confessional fragment on the first of his schoolboy love affairs, followed by a journal of his time studying literature at Liverpool University College. Next come reflections on Cambridge life and his preoccupations with sex, then an essay that records the events – or rather the thoughts and feelings – of a single day ‘Monday 16 June 1916’. This piece, written amidst the horrors of the first world war, conjures up a languorous, privileged visit to Vanessa Bell’s house at Charleston, doing virtually nothing the whole day long except lounge around in the garden, making plans to seduce the postman.

As Michael Holroyd admits in his linking commentary between the entries, this piece is guaranteed to infuriate Bloomsbury critics, but for those who are more sympathetic it offers a first-hand glimpse of what life was like amidst this group.

It’s also remarkably similar in style to Virginia Woolf’s poetic meditations and her shorter experimental fictions. It hovers tentatively in the regions of what we now call Proustian ‘moments’, and it is interesting to note that like the Lancaster Gate piece, it ends on a note of erotic confession.

This is a fairly lightweight compilation, but it fills in some gaps left by both the letters and the biography. Strachey is a fascinating character – far more complex than the picture of him as an effete neurasthenic which is commonly circulated.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Michael Holroyd (ed) Lytton Strachey by Himself, London: Abacus, 2005, pp.248, ISBN 0349118124


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Madame de Treymes

July 1, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Madame de Treymes was published in 1907. It was Edith Wharton’s first major work after the success of The House of Mirth which had been published two years previously. The tale features American expatriates living in France, and contrasts new world simplicity and individual freedoms with old world family traditions and manipulation.

Madame de Treymes

Paris: Rainy Street – Gustave Caillebotte 1848-1894


Madame de Treymes – critical commentary

This is a story straight out the mould of Henry James – with hints of Balzac. Democratically open but young and maybe naive American honesty is pitted again tradition-bound European guile with its money-centric and snobbish exclusivity hiding behind a hypocritical veil of religious values. The situation also has a slightly Gothic tinge: an unhappy young woman, trapped in a loveless marriage to a corrupt husband, with very little chance of escape, is hounded by ruthlessly devious relatives.

The central conundrum with which one is left at the end of the tale is Madame de Treymes’ possible motive(s) for deceiving Durham? She understands and explains the family’s traditional and tightly controlled attitudes (fuelled by religious belief) towards divorce. This would be entirely in keeping with social conventions at the time, when the Catholic church frowned upon divorce with a force which was a de facto prohibition.

But this apparently religious objection to divorce has a much more material basis in French society, which was governed by the Napoleonic Code that kept inherited wealth and property concentrated into family units rather than freely distributed amongst individuals. This explains the reason why the Malrive family wish to trade Fanny’s son in return for the divorce. She can exercise her rights to a divorce under civil law, but they keep the son, theoretically united with his father, and thereby prevent any wealth passing out of the family.

The other possible source of her ambiguous motivation is that she is attracted to Durham. After all, she is unhappily married herself (like Fanny) although she does have a lover. But she keeps Durham guessing in a rather flirtatious manner. There is also the fact that Durham certainly spends far more time in the story discussing matters with Madame de Treymes than he does with his purported love object, Fanny de Malrive. But there is no substantial evidence in the text to support this notion, and the potential romantic connection between the two of them is not developed in any way.

Novella?

This is a long story – which leads a number of commentators to consider it as a novella. Edith Wharton was certainly attracted to and proficient in the novella as a literary genre, as her early work The Touchstone (1900) and more famous Ethan Frome (1911) demonstrate.

And the clash between American individualism and French family tradition is certainly a unifying factor amongst the various elements of the story. But there are too many loose ends and unresolved issues in the narrative to qualify it as a novella.

Monsieur de Malrive’s misdeeds are left unexamined, as are those of Monsieur de Treymes. Durham’s attempts to help Madame de Malrive presumably come to nothing (because of the stranglehold the Malrive family has over the conflict) and the potential relationship between Durham and Madame de Treymes fizzles out with everyone going their own way. There is simply not a sufficiently powerful enough resolution to events. It is a reasonably successful story, but it lacks the compression of theme, structure, events, and place which is common to successful novellas.


Madame de Treymes – study resources

Madame de Treymes The Works of Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

Madame de Treymes The Works of Edith Wharton – Amazon US

Madame de Treymes Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Madame de Treymes Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon US

Madame de Treymes The Descent of Man and Other Stories – Project Gutenberg

Red button A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

Madame de Treymes


Madame de Treymes – plot summary

Part I.   In Paris, American bachelor John Durham pays court to unhappily married Fanny de Malrive, his friend from childhood. She expresses a great enthusiasm for the simplicity and openness of her native America, as distinct from the constricted and rule-bound society into which she has married. But she lives in France for the sake of being near her son.

Part II.   She argues that French society and her husband threaten to corrupt the boy. Durham offers to marry her after she has been divorced. She thinks her husband’s family will not agree to a divorce, but that her sister-in-law Madame de Treymes might help.

Part III.   Durham has been a childhood friend of Fanny, but meeting her again in France he finds her much more sophisticated. Visiting her a few days later with his mother and sisters, he first meets Madame de Treymes, who he also finds fascinating.

Part IV.   Durham applies to his cousin Mrs Boykin for information about the mysterious Madame de Treymes. But she and her husband are comically xenophobic, and very critical of Madame de Treymes, whose lover is a Prince with gambling debts.

Part V.   By giving money at a charity event, Durham is invited to the Hotel de Malrive, the austere family home of Fanny’s in-laws. There he realises the stifling forces of cold and hostile tradition he will be up against. However, Madame de Treymes is sympathetic to his case and agrees to dine with him.

Part VI.   At Durham’s suggestion, the Boykins are suddenly flattered to invite a French aristocrat to dinner. Madame de Treymes tells Durham that the family will not consent to a divorce, and reveals that she has borrowed family money which she cannot repay. Durham believes that this to repay her lover’s gambling debts, and she is offering to trade her influence in exchange for his money. He refuses her offer.

Part VII.   Durham accepts the defeat of his hopes, but then suddenly Madame de Treymes arrives with the news that the Marquis de Malrive has decided not to oppose the divorce. She claims it was Durham’s honourable and sensitive approach which has changed things. Durham is slightly sceptical.

Part VIII.   Durham goes to Italy, but returns to the news that a money scandal has engulfed Prince d’Armillac, the lover of Madame de Treymes. Durham tries to thank and repay Madame de Treymes for the good services she has rendered him, but she claims that she has already been repaid – without saying in what form.

Part IX.   Durham goes to England with his mother and sisters whilst the legal process of divorce takes its course. However, on a business trip back to Paris he meets Madame de Treymes at the Hotel de Malrive. She explains her admiration for his having refused to gain Fanny by paying for influence with the family. She also reveals that it was not her influence which changed the family’s attitude to the divorce.

Part X.   She confesses that the family want to claim Fanny’s son which they can do under French law, which puts the family first, before individuals. Her earlier offer of assistance was a deceit, because the decision had already been taken. Durham realises that even telling Fanny all this will destroy his chances of marrying her. But then Madame de Treymes takes pity on Durham and his plight and reveals that even her last argument about possession of the boy was a deceit as well. Durham leaves to tell Fanny the whole story, knowing his chances of marrying her are gone.


Madame de Treymes – Principal characters
John Durham an American in France (40)
Marquise Fanny de Malrive his childhood friend, neé Fanny Frisbee
Madame Christiane de Treymes Fanny’s sister-in-law
Mrs Bessie Boykin Durham’s cousin
Elmer Boykin her husband
Prince d’Armillac Madame de Treymes’ lover, a gambler

Edith Wharton's house - The Mount

Edith Wharton’s 42-room house – The Mount


Further reading

Louis Auchincloss, Edith Wharton: A Woman of her Time, New York: Viking, 1971,

Elizabeth Ammons, Edith Wharton’s Argument with America, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1982, pp.222. ISBN: 0820305138

Janet Beer, Edith Wharton (Writers & Their Work), New York: Northcote House, 2001, pp.99, ISBN: 0746308981

Millicent Bell (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, pp.232, ISBN: 0521485134

Alfred Bendixen and Annette Zilversmit (eds), Edith Wharton: New Critical Essays, New York: Garland, 1992, pp.329, ISBN: 0824078489

Eleanor Dwight, Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1994, ISBN: 0810927950

Gloria C. Erlich, The Sexual Education of Edith Wharton, California: University of California Press, 1992, pp.223, ISBN: 0520075838

Susan Goodman, Edith Wharton’s Women: Friends and Rivals, UPNE, 1990, pp.220, ISBN: 0874515246

Irving Howe, (ed), Edith Wharton: A collection of Critical Essays, London: University of North Carolina Press, 1986,

Jennie A. Kassanoff, Edith Wharton and the Politics of Race, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp.240, ISBN: 0521830893

Hermione Lee, Edith Wharton, London: Vintage, new edition 2008, pp.864, ISBN: 0099763516

R.W.B. Lewis, Edith Wharton: A Biography, New York: Harper and Rowe, 1975, pp.592, ISBN: 0880640200

James W. Tuttleton (ed), Edith Wharton: The Contemporary Reviews, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp.586, ISBN: 0521383196

Candace Waid, Edith Wharton’s Letters from the Underworld, London: University of North Carolina Press, 1991,

Sarah Bird Wright, Edith Wharton A to Z: The Essential Reference to Her Life and Work, Fact on File, 1998, pp.352, ISBN: 0816034818

Cynthia Griffin Wolff, A Feast of Words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton, New York: Perseus Books, second edition 1994, pp.512, ISBN: 0201409186


Other works by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton - The Custom of the CountryThe Custom of the Country (1913) is Edith Wharton’s satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century. It follows the career of Undine Spragg, recently arrived in New York from the midwest and determined to conquer high society. Glamorous, selfish, mercenary and manipulative, her principal assets are her striking beauty, her tenacity, and her father’s money. With her sights set on an advantageous marriage, Undine pursues her schemes in a world of shifting values, where triumph is swiftly followed by disillusion. This is a study of modern ambition and materialism written a hundred years before its time.

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Edith Wharton - The House of MirthThe House of Mirth (1905) is the story of Lily Bart, who is beautiful, poor, and still unmarried at twenty-nine. In her search for a husband with money and position she betrays her own heart and sows the seeds of the tragedy that finally overwhelms her. The book is a disturbing analysis of the stifling limitations imposed upon women of Wharton’s generation. In telling the story of Lily Bart, who must marry to survive, Wharton recasts the age-old themes of family, marriage, and money in ways that transform the traditional novel of manners into an arresting modern document of cultural anthropology.

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Edith Wharton – web links

Edith Wharton at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, tutorials on the shorter fiction, bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

Edith Wharton at Gutenberg
Free eTexts of the major novels and collections of stories in a variety of digital formats – also includes travel writing and interior design.

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia
Full details of novels, stories, and travel writing, adaptations for television and the cinema, plus web links to related sites.

The Edith Wharton Society
Old but comprehensive collection of free eTexts of the major novels, stories, and travel writing, linking archives at University of Virginia and Washington State University.

The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home
Aggressively commercial site devoted to exploiting The Mount – the house and estate designed by Edith Wharton. Plan your wedding reception here.

Edith Wharton at Fantastic Fiction
A compilation which purports to be a complete bibliography, arranged as novels, collections, non-fiction, anthologies, short stories, letters, and commentaries – but is largely links to book-selling sites, which however contain some hidden gems.

Edith Wharton’s manuscripts
Archive of Wharton holdings at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

© Roy Johnson 2014


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Marcel Proust Illustrated Life

June 8, 2009 by Roy Johnson

biographical notes, charming illustrations, and photos

This short biographical study offers an introduction to Proust’s strange life, and his unrelenting devotion to creativity. It’s written by an expert, and presented in a very attractive manner with archive photographs on almost every page. Mary Ann Caws admits from the outset that with so many other excellent biographies of Proust available [by George Painter, Ronald Hayman, and William Sansom] there’s no point in writing another.

Marcel Proust Illustrated LifeInstead, she produces an account of Proust which takes themes and motifs from his life as a starting point for meditations upon them – some of them not much longer than a single page, and others stretching out in more leisurely fashion to make well-informed reflections on the social context which gave rise to his work.

For those who don’t know Proust well, she includes a sufficient number of tantalizing biographical details to whet any appetite for more. He slept between eight in the morning and three in the afternoon, then worked late into the night, fueled (like Balzac) by strong coffee and a variety of drugs. He turned up to the best restaurants in the middle of the night and paid for special dinners to be laid on. He left some of his best furniture to a male brothel which he frequented.

Caws is steeped in knowledge about Proust and his background, and her account moves easily from his personal life to cultural issues. Her most extensive chapter is a lengthy analysis of Proust’s relationship to music, and the influence of the Ballets Russes on Paris and London in the early years of the last century. She also discusses the influence of the English art critic Ruskin on Proust’s literary style, and notes in addition his enthusiasm for the work of Thomas Hardy.

The beginner expecting a chronological introduction to the main events in Proust’s life might be disappointed, but by way of compensation it is the photographs and illustrations which make this book such a charming experience. The images of late nineteenth century Paris which inspired so much of his work are surrounded by sketches from his notebooks, paintings of the people who inspired his characters, and photographs that you rarely see elsewhere.

© Roy Johnson 2005

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Mary Ann Caws, Marcel Proust: an illustrated life, New York: Overlook Press. 2005, pp.112, ISBN: 1585676489


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Marcel Proust on Reading

September 9, 2011 by Roy Johnson

the philosophy of books, authors, and their readers

Marcel Proust on Reading is a collection of essays and reflections on the relations between writers, text, and readers. When he was only twenty-six Marcel Proust had already written Jean Santeuil, a thousand page would-be novel. It’s a trial run for his much more successful In Search of Lost Time. He realised that it lacked structure and coherence, and in 1897 he abandoned it unfinished. He turned away from fiction and devoted a number of years to studying and translating the works of John Ruskin, who was then at the height of his popularity and influence as an English cultural critic. Proust learned a great deal from him; he imitated his prose style; and he empathised deeply with Ruskin’s belief in the moral value of high art.

Marcel Proust on ReadingProust’s English was not very good. As he himself admitted ‘I do not claim to know English; I claim to know Ruskin’. And what he also claimed was an ability to read in such a sympathetic manner that he could grasp the underlying personal ‘tune’ of a writer beneath the words on the surface of the page. This skill was something which led him to write a number of Pastiches of famous writers. But it also led him to write the long essay on the philosophy of reading that is at the heart of this collection.

The essaay is his preface to his translation of Ruskin’s famous collection of lectures Sesame and Lilies. The other items in the book are the original Ruskin lecture On Kings’ Treasuries complete with Proust’s extensive footnotes and commentary, and four short prefaces by Proust to his other translations. The book also has both a foreword and an introduction written by two different translators, commenting on the origin of the texts themselves – quite a curious compilation.

Proust starts out in very typical fashion by talking about the pleasures of reading as a child, but he points out that those stories we love and which we wish could go on forever are not a virtue in themselves so much as a trigger for the memories and associations they allow us to carry into our adult lives.

He explores a whole philosophy of books, authors, and reading, throwing off interesting observations and aphorisms on almost every page:

Indeed, this is one of the great and wondrous characteristics of beautiful books (and one which enables us to understand the simultaneously essential and limited role that reading can play in our spiritual life): that for the author they may be called Conclusions, but for the reader, Provocations.

In other words, the author’s work is complete, but for the reader, this is just the start of an imaginative journey. And of course ‘Reading’ is interpreted in its very broadest sense. One moment he is discussing literature, but then the next it’s paintings, architecture, and philosophy – anywhere the creative spirit can leave its mark.

Ruskin’s lecture purports to be on ‘the treasures hidden in books’, and it does take in the form of empathetic reading that Proust describes. But it is largely a rambling series of lofty over-generalisations offered de haut en bas concerning the evils of contemporary society, which include road tunnels in the Alps, iron foundries in the UK, and ‘new hotels and perfumers’ shops’. Proust’s footnotes offer both a critique of Ruskin’s ideas and an appreciative close reading that demonstrates a practical example of sensing the author’s ‘tune’ beneath the surface of his words.

Proust would have loved Hypertext. He is forever inserting examples, asides, correctives, and qualifications into the flow of his text. He is an avid user of footnotes, and of course we know that he composed his works in an accretive manner, with one strip of paper after another glued into the pages of the exercises books he used as he thought of extra things to say.

Marcel Proust - typescript and revisions

Proust’s revisions to a typescript

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© Roy Johnson 2011


Marcel Proust, On Reading, London: Hesperus Press, 2011, pp.113, ISBN: 1843916169


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Marcel Proust translations

September 21, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a comparison of the three generally available versions

Marcel Proust - portraitMost English-speaking readers will choose to read Marcel Proust in translation. And his literary style is quite demanding. His sentences are long, the paragraphs are huge, and his great novel is one of the longest ever – at a million and a half words. But the effort is worthwhile – and the benefits are enormous. Proust offers gems of psychological perception on every page, and his characters come alive in a way which makes you feel they become your personal friends. There is very little in the way of plot, suspense, or even story in a conventional sense. This modern classic is one which depicts an entire world of upper-class fin de siècle French characters circling round each other before and shortly after the First World War.

The greatest depths of insight he offers are in the form of profound reflections on some of the most important issues any novelist can approach – love, desire, memory, time, and death. These are presented in the form of extended aphorisms, embedded as part of his narrative in such a way that you will hardly be aware where one ends and the other begins.

Other people are, as a rule, so immaterial to us that, when we have entrusted to any one of them the power to cause so much suffering or happiness to ourselves, that person seems at once to belong to a different universe, is surrounded with poetry, makes of our lives a vast expanse, quick with sensation, on which that person and ourselves are ever more or less in contact.

Marcel Proust translations - Scott-MoncrieffEventually, it comes down to which translation should you read – and in English there are three options currently in print. My favourite is the oldest by C.K. Scott Moncrieff. It was first to appear as the original volumes were published, and it even had Proust’s own blessing. Although it is based on a version of the French original which was not complete, it has a charm all of its own. There may be technical errors here and there, but it will take a long time for any of the subsequent translations to supersede its elegance and the powerful influence it has had. It is still held in high regard as a work of literary interpretation.

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Marcel Proust - six-pack The second option is an edition which is based on the Scott Moncrieff original translation, but which was revised and re-translated by Terrence Kilmartin in the 1990s. This version is also informed by updated versions of the original text in French, including new material which has come to light since the author’s death. Kilmartin’s work was then itself edited by D.J.Enright. So this version comes to us with a guarantee of completeness and accuracy, but with the traces of three different translators’ hands since the original work. Each volume contains its own notes, addenda, and a synopsis, so readers new to Proust can feel supported by this additional material.

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This same tanslation by Kilmartin and Enright is now also available in Everyman’s Library Classics edition. It’s available in both hardback and paperback versions, and they have the advantage of being presented in just four volumes, which keeps down the cost of the complete work.

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Marcel Proust translations - box setThe most recent version was produced by seven different translators. This has the advantage of being the most up to date. It is based on the latest version of a text with a very tangled provenance, and each translator writes a preface on the problems of translation. This version got a mixed reception when it first appeared. Some people argue that it removes a certain prissiness which had clung to the English version of Proust since Scott Moncrieff’s translation. Others have claimed that it introduces new problems and lacks a unifying voice. Perhaps the best reason for choosing it is that it’s now generally available at a cut-down price in a handy boxed set.

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The Cambridge Companion to Proust The Cambridge Companion to Proust provides essays on the major features of Marcel Proust’s great work. These investigate such essential areas as the composition of the novel, its social dimension, the language in which it is couched, its intellectual parameters, its humour, its analytical profundity and its wide appeal and influence. This is suitable for those who want to study Proust in depth. The discussion is illustrated by textual quotation (in both French and English) and close analysis. This is the only volume of its kind on Proust currently available. It contains a detailed chronology and bibliography.

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Marcel Proust: BiographyMarcel Proust is the definitive biography, by George Painter. This study has become famous in its own right, because it combines deep insights with scholarly rigour – and it is also written in a very stylish manner. Painter sketches in the background to Parisian society, which provides a historical context for what follows. He then traces Proust’s singular life (the neurasthenia, the ‘job’ he kept for one day, the cork-lined bedroom) up to his death in 1922 – where he was still revising his masterpiece in bed, which is where he had written most of it. This is regarded as a classic of modern biography, and in 1965 it was awarded the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize.

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Marcel Proust – web links

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guide to ‘In Search of Lost Time’. comparison of the English translations, book reviews, web links, study resources.

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust at Project Gutenberg
A collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats, mainly in French.

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, early works, bibliography, further reading, and web links.

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, plus production notes, box office, trivia and quiz.

Marcel Proust web links Temps Perdu.com
Translations, collector’s editions, Proust chronology, characters in the novel, film audio and music, online version of the novel, and discussion groups.

Marcel Proust web links The Kolb-Proust Archive
An online searchable database of Proust’s correspondence in French and English, plus further study resources and related web sites. – located at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Marcel Proust web links Proust’s In Search of Lost Time
Picture gallery, bibliography, who’s who, video and audio files, and web links.

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust – Ephemera Site
Juvenilia, articles, pastiches, poetry, letters – materials unavailable elsewhere.

© Roy Johnson 2004


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Marcel Proust web links

December 10, 2010 by Roy Johnson

a selection of web-based archives and resources

This short selection of Marcel Proust web links offers quick connections to resources for further study. It’s not comprehensive, and if you have any ideas for additional resources, please use the ‘Comments’ box below to make suggestions.

Marcel Proust - portrait

Marcel Proust – web links

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guide to ‘In Search of Lost Time’. comparison of the English translations, book reviews, web links, study resources.

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust at Project Gutenberg
A collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats, mainly in French.

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, early works, bibliography, further reading, and web links.

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, plus production notes, box office, trivia and quiz.

Marcel Proust web links Temps Perdu.com
Translations, collector’s editions, Proust chronology, characters in the novel, film audio and music, online version of the novel, and discussion groups.

Marcel Proust web links The Kolb-Proust Archive
An online searchable database of Proust’s correspondence in French and English, plus further study resources and related web sites. – located at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Marcel Proust web links Proust’s In Search of Lost Time
Picture gallery, bibliography, who’s who, video and audio files, and web links.

Marcel Proust web links Marcel Proust – Ephemera Site
Juvenilia, articles, pastiches, poetry, letters – materials unavailable elsewhere.


WRITING – I

Mont Blanc pen - Proust edition

Mont Blanc – Marcel Proust special edition

Don’t let this glamorous fountain pen deceive you. Marcel Proust’s writing instruments and his notebooks were quite humble. He used Sergent-Major nibs and pen holder which were the cheapest of their kind. For paper, he used the common French school children’s exercise notebooks which he purchased in bulk.


The Cambridge Companion to ProustThe Cambridge Companion to Proust
This compilation provides essays on the major features of Marcel Proust’s great work. These investigate such essential areas as the composition of the novel, its social dimension, the language in which it is couched, its intellectual parameters, its humour, its analytical profundity and its wide appeal and influence. This is suitable for those who want to study Proust in depth. The discussion is illustrated by textual quotation (in both French and English) and close analysis. This is the only volume of its kind on Proust currently available. It contains a detailed chronology and bibliography.

© Roy Johnson 2010


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Marriage a la Mode

December 30, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Marriage a la Mode was one of a group of six stories commissioned from Katherine Mansfield by Clement Shorter, the editor of the Sphere, a fashionable illustrated newspaper targeted at British citizens living in the colonies. The story was written in August 1921 and published in December the same year. It was later reprinted in The Garden Party and Other Stories published in 1922.

Marriage a la Mode

Marriage a la Mode – William Hogarth


Marriage a la Mode – critical commentary

Anthony Alpers, Katherine Mansfield’s biographer, describes Marriage a la Mode as a ‘shallow … bill-paying’ story whose lack of depth and subtlety is a result of her badly needing money to pay doctors’ fees during her illness whilst living in Montana-sur-Sierre in Switzerland.

It is certainly true that the story requires very little close reading or interpretive skill to yield its single meaning. William is a crushed husband figure whose tender feelings for his family are completely trampled upon by his wife’s selfishness, her social climbing, and her self-indulgent bohemianism. He is more or less excluded socially from his own home by her empty-headed friends. When he is driven by necessity to communicate his love for her by letter, she responds by reading it out for the amusement and mockery of her house guests. When she realises what a heartless and vulgar thing she has done, there is a momentary impulse to reach out to her husband in response – but instead she chooses to rejoin her friends.

It is a sceptical, if not jaundiced view of marriage, but it is to Mansfield’s credit that as a writer who so often reveals masculine foibles and insensitivities in her work, she creates here a sympathetic account of a working man and a scathing portrayal of his selfish and empty-headed wife.

Plagiarism?

A number of commentators have pointed to the similarities between Marriage a la Mode and a story by Anton Checkhov called Not Wanted (1886). In fact the most severe of these critics have accused her of direct plagiarism.

In Checkhov’s story a Court official Pavel Zaikin is travelling out to his summer cottage by train in the summer heat. He complains to a fellow traveller in ‘ginger trousers’ about the cost and inconvenience, which he attributes to ‘women’s frivolity’.

He finds his son alone in the cottage: his wife is attending the rehearsal of a play and has not prepared any dinner. Zaikin feels anger gnawing at him and in bad temper he scolds his son without reason – then regrets having done so.

His wife Nadyezhda returns from the rehearsal with her friend Olga and two men. She sends the servant out for ‘sardines, vodka, and cheese’. The thespians then begin noisy rehearsals until late, after which she invites the two men to stay the night. She also moves Zaikin out of his own bed to accommodate Olga. In the early morning Zaikin gets dressed and goes out into the street, where he meets the man in ginger trousers again. He too has a houseful of unexpected visitors.

The similarities in the two stories are the working husband who is abused by a self-indulgent wife; the train journey; the houseful of disruptive bohemians; and the fact that the man is treated like an outsider in his own home.

But this was not the first time Katherine Mansfield had re-told a story by Checkhov. Her early piece The-Child-Who-Was-Tired is taken from Checkhov’s Sleepyhead (1888) and her plagiarism was the subject of a debate on her conscious or unconscious borrowings in the pages of theTimes Literary Supplement in the 1950s.

However, she composed so many original and outstanding stories of entirely her own invention, that it is unlikely these accusations will cause the damage to her reputation some people hope for and others fear. But there is one telling detail in Marriage a la Mode that nails the story inescapably to its Russian origins – and that is the choice of sardines for the improvised evening meal. Isabel’s arty friends consume sardines and whisky, whilst Checkhov’s amateur theatricals have their sardines and vodka. There is simply no escaping the fact that this detail is copied. Fish and vodka are entirely native to Russian culture, but would be exceptional in English social life.


Marriage a la Mode – study resources

Marriage a la Mode Katherine Mansfield’s Collected Works
Three published collections of stories – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Marriage a la Mode The Collected Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Wordsworth Classics paperback edition – Amazon UK

Marriage a la Mode The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Penguin Classics paperback edition – Amazon UK

Marriage a la Mode Katherine Mansfield Megapack
The complete stories and poems in Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Marriage a la Mode Katherine Mansfield’s Collected Works
Three published collections of stories – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Marriage a la Mode The Collected Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Wordsworth Classics paperback edition – Amazon US

Marriage a la Mode The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Penguin Classics paperback edition – Amazon US

Marriage a la Mode Katherine Mansfield Megapack
The complete stories and poems in Kindle edition – Amazon US


Marriage a la Mode – plot summary

A London solicitor William is returning home on Saturday afternoon to his fashionable and demanding wife Isabel. He feels anxious about not having bought presents for his two sons, but buys them a melon and pineapple instead. He reads through legal papers, but is distracted by thoughts of his wife, who has cooled in her feelings towards him. They have moved from a modest to a much bigger house, and Isabel has made new friends, but William thinks back to their earlier days when he was happier.

Isabel is waiting for him at the station, but she is accompanied by some party-loving friends. She appropriates the fruit, and they buy sweets for the boys instead, meanwhile making asinine comments. When they arrive at the house, the party go off swimming, leaving William to reflect critically on the way the house is being run. Returning from the swim, they eat sardines and drink whisky, disattending to William.

The following day William is preparing to return to London. He has not seen his sons and has had no opportunity to talk to Isabel. When he gets to his train he decides to write to her instead.

The next day Isabel and her friends are lazing about in the sun when William’s letter arrives. It is a long love letter in which he reveals his feelings for her, and says he doesn’t want to stand between her and her happiness. She reads it out aloud to her friends, who scoff and make fun of the letter. Isabel suddenly feels ashamed of what she has done, and has the impulse to write a reply, but when the friends invite her to go swimming, she leaves with them instead.

Marriage a la Mode


Katherine Mansfield – web links

Katherine Mansfield at Mantex
Life and works, biography, a close reading, and critical essays

Katherine Mansfield at Wikipedia
Biography, legacy, works, biographies, films and adaptations

Katherine Mansfield at Online Books
Collections of her short stories available at a variety of online sources

Not Under Forty
A charming collection of literary essays by Willa Cather, which includes a discussion of Katherine Mansfield.

Katherine Mansfield at Gutenberg
Free downloadable versions of her stories in a variety of digital formats

Hogarth Press first editions
Annotated gallery of original first edition book jacket covers from the Hogarth Press, including Mansfield’s ‘Prelude’

Katherine Mansfield’s Modernist Aesthetic
An academic essay by Annie Pfeifer at Yale University’s Modernism Lab

The Katherine Mansfield Society
Newsletter, events, essay prize, resources, yearbook

Katherine Mansfield Birthplace
Biography, birthplace, links to essays, exhibitions

Katherine Mansfield Website
New biography, relationships, photographs, uncollected stories

© Roy Johnson 2014


More on Katherine Mansfield
Twentieth century literature
More on the Bloomsbury Group
More on short stories


Filed Under: Katherine Mansfield Tagged With: English literature, Katherine Mansfield, Literary studies, Modernism, The Short Story

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