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literary studies, cultural history, and study skill techniques

literary studies, cultural history, and study skill techniques

Nabokov’s Complete Stories

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a critical examination of Nabokov’s collected stories

Nabokov’s Complete Stories is an analysis of the fifty collected tales included in Nabokov’s Dozen (1959), A Russian Beauty and Other Stories (1973), Tyrants Destroyed and Other Stories (1975), and Details of a Sunsetand Other Stories (1976).

In 1995 Nabokov’s son Dmitri edited and issued a single volume of Nabokov’s complete collected stories. This edition contained stories which had emerged since the author’s death and some very early works that Nabokov himself did not think were worth republishing. Studies and critiques of these earlier works are being added as a supplement here.

•   Introduction

Part I – Apprentice Years: Stories 1924 – 1929

•   A Matter of Chance
•   Details of a Sunset
•   The Thunderstorm
•   Bachmann
•   Christmas
•   A Letter that Never Reached Russia
•   The Return of Chorb
•   A Guide to Berlin
•   A Nursery Tale
•   Terror
•   The Passenger
•   The Doorbell
•   An Affair of Honour
•   The Potato Elf

Part II – The European Master: Stories 1930 – 1939

•   The Eye
•   The Aurelian
•   A Bad Day
•   A Busy Man
•   Terra Incognita
•   Lips to Lips
•   The Reunion
•   Orache
•   Music
•   A Dashing Fellow
•   Perfection
•   The Admiralty Spire
•   The Leonardo
•   The Circle
•   Breaking the News
•   In Memory of L.I.Shigaev
•   A Russian Beauty
•   Torpid Smoke
•   Recruiting
•   A Slice of Life
•   Spring in Fialta
•   Cloud, Castle, Lake
•   Tyrants Destroyed
•   The Visit to the Museum
•   Lik
•   Vasiliy Shishkov

Part III – American Notes: Stories 1940 – 1951

•   The Assistant Producer
•   That in Aleppo Once…
•   A Forgotten Poet
•   Time and Ebb
•   Conversation Piece
•   Signs and Symbols
•   The Vane Sisters
•   Lance
•   Conclusion

Additional Stories

•   Additional stories

Vladimir Nabokov Collected Stories   Vladimir Nabokov: The Collected Stories – Amazon UK
Vladimir Nabokov Collected Stories   Vladimir Nabokov: The Collected Stories – Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2005

Vladimir Nabokov web links
Vladimir Nabokov greatest works
Vladimir Nabokov criticism
Vladimir Nabokov life and works

Nadine Gordimer – a guide to her writing

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Nadine Gordimer - portraitNadine Gordimer (1923—2014) was born into a privileged white middle-class family in the Transvaal, South Africa. She began reading at an early age, and published her first story in a magazine when she was only fifteen. Her wide reading informed her about the world on the other side of apartheid – the official South African policy of racial segregation – and that discovery in time developed into strong political opposition to apartheid. She attended the University of Witwatersrand for one year. Her first book was a collection of short stories, The Soft Voice of the Serpent (1952). In addition to writing, she lectured and taught at various schools in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. She was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature in 1991.

Nadine Gordimer was a writer who started by picking up the modernist baton from authors such as Virginia Woolf, and she is one of the few writers who has taken the techniques of modernism a few steps further. She does this particularly in her short stories, where like Woolf she uses the genre as an experimental kitchen for her longer prose works such as her novellas and full length novels. In fact some of her shorter fiction is more interesting in terms of formal experimentation than her novels, many of which are often rather long and formless – although this is a purely personal opinion.

Her writing is always interesting politically – and she never shirked the difficult issues raised by the legacy of white European domination in South Africa. She’s also an excellent observer of what might be called the politics of gender or sexuality. She writes about the physical relationships between women and men in a way which is honest, frank, revealing, and unsparingly unsentimental.

Some passages in her work render the sexual tensions between men and women more accurately than any writer since D.H.Lawrence – and they have the novelty of often being presented from a woman’s point of view, though she is perfectly capable of writing from a male perspective too. She’s also very good at dealing with issues of sex at the level of furtive assignations and sweaty armpits – something often ignored by serious writers.

Her most experimental work is in some of the short stories; the longer stories and novellas such as July’s Children are nearly as successful, but her novels have not seemed so tightly controlled – with one magnificent exception. The Conservationist which lays bare the whole issue of the white European in black Africa.

 

Nadine Gordimer -The ConservationistThe Conservationist (1974) concerns a white industrialist who farms his land (with native help) at the weekend and genuinely wants to make his presence a positive contribution. But most of all he wants to preserve his power and his privileged way of life – despite being surrounded by poverty and suffering. He just doesn’t understand that the indigenous population are the natural owners of the land, and the result is disastrous – for him.

It’s a marvellous novel which summarises the situation in South Africa in the 1980s – but in a way which casts a shadow right up to the present day. The other issue which this magnificent book conveys is the sense of place which is so important to life in South Africa. The native Africans are dispossessed – yet they are at one with the land. Immigrant landowners might try their best to ‘own’ and ‘cultivate’ the land, but they are never ‘at home’ on it.
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Nadine Gordimer - JumpJump Her development as a writer of short stories is wonderful. She starts off in modern post-Checkhovian mode presenting situations which have little drama but which invite the reader to contemplate states of being or moods which illustrate the ideologies of South Africa. Technically, Nadine Gordimer experiments heavily with point of view, narrative perspective, unexplained incidents, switches between internal monologue and third person narrative (rather like Virginia Woolf) and a heavy use of ‘as if’ prose where narrator-author boundaries become very blurred.
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Nadine Gordimer - Selected StoriesSelected Stories As her work matured, her style and methods underwent a similar development to those of Virginia Woolf. Some of her stories became more lyrical, more compacted and symbolic, abandoning any semblance of conventional story or plot in favour of a poetic meditation on a theme. There are some stories which make enormous demands upon the reader. Sometimes on first reading it’s even hard to know what is going on. But gradually a densely concentrated image or an idea will emerge – the equivalent of a Joycean ‘epiphany’ – and everything falls into place. Her own collection of Selected Stories are UK National Curriculum recommended reading.
Nadine Gordimer Buy the book from Amazon UK
Nadine Gordimer Buy the book from Amazon US

The following extract from The Conservationist gives some idea of her robust prose style, composed of dense, powerful imagery, rich vocabularly, gnarled syntax, and sinuous prose rhythms.

The weather came from the Mozambique Channel.

Space is conceived as trackless but there are beats about the world frequented by cyclones given female names. One of these beats crosses the Indian Ocean by way of the islands of the Seychelles, Madagascar, and the Mascarenes. The great island of Madagascar forms one side of the Channel and shields a long stretch of the east coast of Africa, which forms the other, from the open Indian Ocean. A cyclone paused somewhere miles out to sea, miles up in the atmosphere, its vast hesitation raising a draught of tidal waves, wavering first towards one side of the island then over the mountains to the other, darkening the thousand up-turned mirrors of the rice paddies and finally taking off again with a sweep that shed, monstrous cosmic peacock, gross pailletes of hail, a dross of battering rain, and all the smashed flying detritus of uprooted trees, tin roofs, and dead beasts caught up in it.

© Roy Johnson 2009

Never Let Me Go

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tutorial, commentary, study resources, and plot summary,

Never Let Me Go (2005) is the sixth novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, the Anglo-Japanese writer, who was shortlisted for the Booker Prize which he had won previously in 1989 for The Remains of the Day. The novel was adapted for the cinema in 2010 by Mark Romanek for a film with the same title starring Keira Knightly.

Never Let Me Go

Kazuo Ishiguro

Never Let Me Go – critical comment

Biography

Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki in Japan in 1954. His father was an oceanographer who moved to live in Britain in 1960. Kazuo attended grammar school in Surrey, then studied English and Philosophy at the University of Kent in Canterbury. After a gap year touring America and Canada, he entered the creative writing programme at the University of East Anglia, where his tutors included Malcolm Bradbury and Angela Carter. He graduated with an MA in 1980 and became a British citizen in 1982. He has written novels, screenplays, stories, and the lyrics to songs for the Anglo-American jazz singer Stacey Kent. He has won several literary awards, including the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for his first novel A Pale View of Hills (1982), the Whitbread Prize for An Artist of the Floating World (1986), and the Booker Prize for The Remains of the Day (1989). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2017.

Dystopia

A dystopia is the opposite of a utopian view of the world. Utopian narratives imagine successful, harmonious, and happy worlds, whereas a dystopian world emphasises all its worst elements and even exaggerates them as a form of warning about what we might become if these elements are not held in check.

Because these dysfunctional worlds do not exist but are creations of the imagination, there is a great deal of overlap with the imaginary worlds of science-fiction.

Utopias in literature include Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), Sir Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627), and H.G.Wells’ A Modern Utopia (1905). Examples of dystopias include Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1927), George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1947 – which was based on Zamyatin’s novel), and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932).

Some novels may even combine elements of both Utopia and Dystopia to create satires of society – such as Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872).

Narrative voice

One of the main problems in a novel of this length is the quality of the narrative voice. Ishiguro takes the naturalistic rendering of his protagonist’s first person account to almost unbearable lengths of tedium. Her narrative is packed with repetition, cliché, dated teenage slang, and manufactured uncertainties.

She talks in what one reviewer called “a sort of social worker’s drone, all professional cant and washed-out idiom (‘When it came down to it … Anyway, I’m not making any big claims for myself.’)

“While we’re on the subject … Looking back now … And then there was the time that … But that’s not really what I want to talk about just now … When it came down to it … I don’t know how it was where you were … Anyway … Now to be fair … As it happened … What with one thing and another … “

There are too many events and incidents that have little structural significance, and that are inflated beyond any sense of their intrinsic interest. In the later part of the book for instance there is a protracted excursion to Cromer in Norfolk which promises to reveal something significant about the ‘possibles’ – people from whom the characters might have been cloned – but this comes to nothing when they decide they have made a mistake.

Much is made of a cassette tape containing Kathy’s favourite song which gives the novel its title – Never Let Me Go – then its unexplained disappearance, followed by a search for its replacement. But none of this, including the title, is linked in any significant way to the central issues of the novel.

Similarly, there is an outing to visit an abandoned boat on the marshes, the type of incident which in most stories would be at least metaphoric, if not symbolic of something important within the meaning of the novel as a whole. But the tediously extended episode adds nothing to what we already know.

Conversely, there is an attempt to give significance to what are no more than teenage arguments, changes in allegiance, and feelings of isolation. But these fail to be convincing, because they remain no more than adolescent trivia which contribute nothing to any narrative interest. But this issue does raise another point.

It’s possible that Never Let Me Go was produced quite deliberately as a genre novel for the teenage market, but Ishiguro has done himself no favours by presenting his story in such a banal and repetitive narrative voice, and packing the story with largely inconsequential behaviour – without exploring any of the ramifications of the scientific conceit on which the novel is based.

Science-fiction?

We now know that advances in microbiology and DNA manipulation now permit animal matter to be cloned. In this sense the novel is not very ‘futuristic’. But the idea of cloning human beings specifically (and at risk of their own death) to provide body parts to keep other people alive – is a sinister form of modern human sacrifice.

The problem is that Ishiguro simply does not examine the social or scientific rationale for this practice. Nor does he explain how individual humans can be clone-created to have normally functioning body parts (apart from reproductive organs) yet be so singularly lacking in will, imagination, and resistance.

The main problem is that whilst it is possible to suspend disbelief and accept the authoritarianism behind cloning and genetic engineering. there is no plausible reason offered why the characters should be so totally passive and accepting of their planned destinies.

These are characters who watch television, drive cars, have lots of sex, and read Daniel Deronda, yet who show no enterprise when they are free to walk away at any time from their planned organ donations. The organisation that has created them has even gone out of business by the end of the novel, but at no point do any of them think to regard themselves as autonomous beings.

Never Let Me Go – study resources

Never Let Me Go Never Let Me Go – Faber paperback – Amazon UK

Never Let Me Go Never Let Me Go – Faber paperback – Amazon US

Never Let Me Go The Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro – paperback – Amazon UK

Never Let Me Go Kazuo Ishiguro: A Routledge Guide – paperback – Amazon UK

Never Let Me Go Conversations with Kazuo Ishiguro – paperback – Amazon UK

Never Let Me Go GCSE Revision Notes – page by page analysis – Amazon UK

Never Let Me Go – plot summary

Chapter 1. Kathy H introduces herself as a ‘carer’, and recounts her early years at what seems to be an authoritarian boarding school called Hailsham and her concern for an outsider youth Tommy.

Chapter 2. She describes daily life at the school and further instances of teasing and bullying on Tommy, who retreats into a childlike state.

Chapter 3. Tommy tells Kathy about a conversation with sporty and butch ‘guardian’ Miss Lucy who sympathises with his lack of creative ability. Kathy recounts how the controller of the school, called Madame, is frightened of contact with the students, even though she appropriates their artworks for her private ‘gallery’.

Chapter 4. The students are given tokens in exchange for their work which they can exchange at occasional ‘Sales’. They all appear to have problems with missing memories. Kathy’s friend Ruth makes her into a ‘secret guard’ of Miss Geraldine, a favourite guardian.

Chapter 5. Surrounded by menacing woods at the school, the secret guards plot to kidnap Miss Geraldine. There is rivalry between Kathy and Ruth about favouritism.

Chapter 6. Rivalries and ‘secret knowledge’ continue to cause tensions. Norfolk is regarded as a ‘lost corner’ of Britain. Smoking is forbidden at the school because the students must preserve their ‘special’ natures. Kathy plays her tape of Never Let Me Go. She knows that she and all the other students are infertile. The tape goes missing, but Ruth presents her with an alternative.

Chapter 7. Miss Lucy reveals to them that they have been bred as DNA clones and organ donors. It appears that their body parts are detachable.

Chapter 8. Kathy reports on sexual activity amongst the students, including her friends Tommy and Ruth, and her own preparations to have sex with Harry.

Chapter 9. Miss Lucy retracts what she has previously told Tommy about creativity not being important – and then suddenly disappears when she is expelled from the school.

Part Two

Chapter 10. After leaving Hailsham, Kathy transfers to the Cottages with Tommy, Ruth and others. They imitate each other’s gestures, then Kathy and Ruth quarrel.

Chapter 11. Kathy looks back on and revises her memories of conversations with Ruth. She then starts having casual sex; Ruth gets rid of her collection of memorabilia; and Tommy catches Kathy looking at porn magazines.

Chapter 12. Veterans at the Cottages, Chrissie and Rodney report back from a trip to Cromer where they have seen a possible original for Ruth, who then begins to fantasise about her ‘dream future’ working in a modern office.

Chapter 13. A month later five of them go on an excursion to Cromer where the two veterans Chrissie and Rodney ask the rest about the rules for requesting a ‘deferral’ of two or three years before they become organ donors. Nobody knows the rules.

Chapter 14. They locate Ruth’s ‘possible’ in an office on the High Street, then see her again later. When they follow her to an art gallery they all realise she is not a possible, then argue about going to visit Martin, another ex-veteran.

Chapter 15. Tommy and Kathy go in search of her lost tape and find a copy. He tells her his theory that the Madame’s gallery is a repository of the students’ souls which will enable the guardians to make choices for deferrals. He also thinks Kathy might have been looking at the porn magazines in search of her ‘possible’ – which she thinks could explain her uncontrollable sexual urges.

Chapter 16. Tommy shows Kathy his miniature drawings of imaginary animals, then discusses his gallery theory with Ruth and Kathy. Ruth claims that they find his drawings laughable, which creates unpleasant tensions in relations between the three friends.

Chapter 17. Kathy tries to resolve these tensions by talking to Ruth. During the conversation Ruth suggests that Tommy disapproves of Kathy’s sexual promiscuity. Shortly afterwards Kathy decides to leave the Cottages and start her training.

Part Three

Chapter 18. Some time later Kathy is working independently as a carer. She bumps into Laura, an old friend from the Cottages. They discuss Ruth, and Laura suggests that Kathy become Ruth’s carer. It transpires that Hailsham has closed, which makes Kathy feel cut off from her former fellow students. She does become Ruth’s carer, but there are still tensions between them. Ruth persuades Kathy to take her to see a boat – which is an opportunity or an excuse to see Tommy.

Chapter 19. Ruth and Kathy visit Tommy at the Kingsfield centre and take him to see the boat. They discuss their donors, some of whom have ‘completed’ (died) during the operation. They see an advertising poster which recalls the trip to Norfolk, then Ruth reveals that she has had sex with others besides Tommy. She wants Kathy and Tommy to be a couple and apply for a deferral, and also suggests that Kathy become Tommy’s carer. She dies shortly afterwards during her second donation.

Chapter 20. Kathy becomes Tommy’s carer and starts having sex with him. He starts drawing his animal pictures again, but not so successfully. Kathy has located the Madame, whom they plan to visit to request a deferral.

Chapter 21. They visit the Madame where Tommy explains his theory of the gallery. The Madame understands but does not admit to its validity. However, she produces Miss Emily, the head guardian, in a wheelchair.

Chapter 22. Miss Emily reveals to them that the idea of deferrals is merely a false rumour she has been unable to extinguish. She claims that the art works were taken to prove to doubters that the students did have souls, and were being well educated. She explains the post-war history of the ‘movement’ which has now been brought to a halt because of a scandal which has resulted in a lack of sponsors. The Madame explains her sympathies for their plight as donors. On their way back, Tommy gets out of the car and goes into a rage in a field.

Chapter 23. Tommy is preparing for his fourth donation when he suggests to Kathy that she should no longer be his carer – and he dies shortly afterwards, leaving her to face an uncertain future.

Kazuo Ishiguro – other novels

Never Let Me Go A Pale View of Hills – Amazon UK

Never Let Me Go When We Were Orphans – Amazon UK

Never Let Me Go An Artist of the Floating World – Amazon UK

Never Let Me Go The Unconsoled – Amazon UK

Never Let Me Go The Buried Giant – Amazon UK

© Roy Johnson 2014

Nicholas Nickleby

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

Nicholas Nickleby first appeared as a serial novel in nineteen monthly instalments between 1838 and 1839, published by Chapman and Hall. It was Charles Dickens’ third novel, but he wrote it at the same time as he was completing his second novel, Oliver Twist. He had struck a best-selling formula with his first novel – The Pickwick Papers – an episodic narrative issued in monthly parts, and he stuck to this publishing format, selling 50,000 copies a month of each instalment, which cost one shilling per issue and two shillings for the final double issue.

Nicholas Nickleby

a monthly instalment

It is worth noting, in terms of the history of the novel and literature as a cultural medium, that Charles Dickens’ name does not appear on the cover – only his nom de plume, ‘Boz’. And he is not the author but the editor of these recorded adventures – almost as if their existence were due to some other person or source.

In addition, each instalment of the serial was illustrated – in this case by his favourite artist, Hablot Knight Browne, who was also given a pseudonym of ‘Phiz’. The convention of illustrating novels persisted until the end of the nineteenth century and then disappeared in the early twentieth.

Nicholas Nickleby – critical commentary

The picaresque novel

Dickens greatly admired the novelists of the eighteenth century – Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, and Tobias Smollett – all of whom had inherited the earlier tradition of the novel as a picaresque narrative. That is, the focus of attention in a novel was on an individual who engaged with society and embarked on a series of adventures. In its original form the picaro was usually a low-life character, and this is perhaps reflected in Fielding’s hero (in Tom Jones) being a foundling, or in Smollett’s heroes Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle being ‘groundlings’ or ordinary characters.

The traditional picaresque novel featured a one central character (Lazarillo de Tormes and Tom Jones for example), but Dickens gives this convention a creative twist by having essentially two central characters battling with the vicissitudes of society. Nicholas and his sister Kate are both young and vulnerable following their father’s death. They are saddled with a mother who is worse than useless as a moral and spiritual guide, and they are surrounded by villainous characters who wish to do them harm.

Nicholas first has to battle with the psychopathic schoolmaster Wackford Squeers and his equally brutal family. Then he is also thwarted by his uncle, Ralph Nickleby

Ralph Nickleby is also the spider at the centre of the corrupt web of upper-class rakes trying to ensnare Kate Nickleby. Even though it is Sir Willoughby Hawk who is her main assailant, he is a client of Ralph’s and operates under his roof. Kate quite rightly complains that the very person who should be protecting her honour (her uncle) is putting her at risk by exposing her to moral danger and actually using her as live bait to ensnare the rich but simple Lord Frederick Verisopht.

The elements of the picaresque novel are normally movement – the journey – encounters with unknown individuals who may be rogues desperadoes, or comic characters. This was the novel as sheer entertainment, and Dickens happily embraced the genre. As well as featuring the hero’s mixed fortunes in society, encounters with rogues and villains, there were also a lot of knockabout comic and farcical scenes, plus no shortage of real physical violence – much in evidence here in the scenes at Dotheboys Hall.

There is very little notion of a tightly plotted story. The essence of the picaresque is a loose, episodic tale where one event follows another. Nevertheless, Dickens inserts elements which typify his later command of the tightly plotted serial novel, with a structure unified by overarching metaphors and symbols.

He introduces mysterious and dramatically interesting details which act as a thread through the episodes of the story. For instance, the curious figure of Newman Noggs who works for but despises Ralph Nickleby. He passes a message to Nicholas as he embarks at the start of the novel on his journey to Yorkshire and Dotheboys Hall. This creates a link between them which enables Nicholas to survive the vicissitudes of his exile and even his return under an assumed name (Johnson).

The negative parent figure

We know that Dickens was very concerned about the ill-treatment of children – despite the fact that he neglected his own. His novels are full of neglected and poor youngsters, children forced into work and crime, and pathetic under-aged beings who suffer and die young.

The other side of this coin is the parent figure who neglects those under its supervision and care. Nicholas Nickleby has a wide range of characters who are what might be called the negative parent figure – people who are responsible for people younger than themselves who neglect their welfare and in some cases actively seek to undermine it.

First in order of appearance of these figures is Wackford Squeers, the sadistic headmaster of Dotheboys Hall, who acts in loco parentis to his pupils. Squeers is motivated entirely by greed and self-gratification. He actually robs the pupils under his care; he beats them; more or less starves them; and actively stands in the way of their securing any possible outside help. He is what we would now classify as a sociopath or even a psychopath

Mr Bray is one of the many miserly characters in the novel, but his outstanding characteristic is that of an emotionally tyrannical father figure. He has a daughter (Madeleine) who is slavishly devoted to him, but rather than appreciate her efforts, he abuses her unmercifully and turns her life into a living misery. Rather like Squeers, he is entirely self-regarding and even sneers at the very sources of income which keep him alive (the ‘purchases’ made by the Cheerybles).

Mrs Nickleby is a great comic figure in the novel – a social snob even when her family has become penniless, and a garrulous featherbrain who fails to understand anything that is going on. She doesn’t actually make her children suffer, but she is certainly derelict in his role as a parent, and it is interesting to note that she shares self-regard and a solipsistic view of the world with the other negative parent figures in the novel.

Ralph Nickleby turns out to be the worst parent figure of all. He is dominated by an almost pathological worship of money. He marries for financial advantage, and when his wife leaves him, he gives away his son – who becomes the abandoned Smike at Dotheboys Hall. The conditions there – in addition to his consumption – contribute to his early death.

Money, inheritance, and class

The origins of the entire narrative lie in a version of the Biblical parable of the talents. At his death old Nicholas Nickleby divides his money between two sons, Ralph and John. One (Ralph) becomes a money lender (a usurer) and makes more money: The other (John) invests his portion of the inheritance in the stock market and loses everything.

This accounts for the tensions within young Nicholas Nickleby’s family and his personal life. He has been raised and educated to be a ‘gentleman’, but he suddenly finds himself with no money and a mother and sister for whom he is responsible.

Nicholas is forced to work as an almost unpaid assistant schoolteacher, whilst his mother clings to comically misplaced snobbish standards as if she were still upper class. Kate too is forced into low-paid work, and can only hope for a suitable marriage to save her from her plight.

But any marriage should be on reasonably equal terms. This explains the dramatically stretched issue of conscience and scruples when Nicholas insists that Kate should not encourage Frank Cheeryble as a suitor – because Frank will inherit from his twin uncles, whereas Kate has nothing to inherit.

Nicholas puts an equally severe limit on himself when he asks for Madeleine to be taken away from his mother’s house. He is in love with her, but he realises that the Cheerybles will look after her financially, whereas he has no inheritance to offer her. He belongs (albeit temporarily) to a lower social class. However, these problems are resolved by the fairy-tale generosity of the Cheerybles.

Nicholas Nickleby – study resources

Nicholas Nickleby Nicholas Nickleby – Oxford World’s Classics – Amazon UK

Nicholas Nickleby Nicholas Nickleby – Oxford World’s Classics – Amazon US

Nicholas Nickleby Nicholas Nickleby – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Nicholas Nickleby Nicholas Nickleby – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Nicholas Nickleby Charles Dickens – biographical notes

Nicholas Nickleby Nicholas Nickleby – eBook at Project Gutenberg

Nicholas Nickleby Nicholas Nickleby – audioBook at LibriVox

Nicholas Nickleby Nicholas Nickleby – Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz) illustrations

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens – Amazon UK

Great Expectations Nicholas Nickleby – Audio book (unabridged) – Amazon UK

Red button Charles Dickens’ London – interactive map

Red button Oxford Reader’s Companion to Charles Dickens – Amazon UK

Nicholas Nickleby – plot summary

Chapter I.   Old Mr Nickleby leaves money to his two sons, Ralph and Nicholas. Ralph invests his inheritance and becomes a successful money-lender. Nicholas speculates with his money on the stock exchange and loses everything.

Chapter II.   Ralph and fellow entrepreneurs hold a public meeting to promote interest in a parliamentary bill to establish a muffin-making business, which will in fact be a monopoly.

Chapter III.   Ralph receives news of the death of his brother. He visits his sister in law and her two young children and, completely lacking in generosity and compassion, arranges to ‘find a job’ for young Nicholas.

Chapter IV.   Wackford Squeers enrolls pupils for his school at Dotheboys Hall in Yorkshire, and Ralph persuades him to take on Nicholas as an assistant schoolmaster.

Chapter V.   Nicholas sets off for Yorkshire. Before departure Newman Noggs slips him a mysterious letter. Squeers feeds himself liberally, but completely neglects his pupils. The coach overturns in bad weather.

Chapter VI.   The travellers recover at a nearby inn, where they regale each other with tales of ‘The Five Sisters of York’ and ‘The Baron of Grogzwig’.

Chapter VII.   Nicholas arrives at Dotheboys Hall, meets the abandoned boy Smike, and is given a frugal supper by Mrs Squeers. He reads the mysterious letter from Noggs, offering him sympathy and accommodation in London if ever he should need it.

Chapter VIII.   Squeers runs the school in a brutal and exploitative manner. All the pupils are broken and miserable. Nicholas is ashamed of being there. Smike has no friends and no hope.

Chapter IX.   The plain Fanny Squeers decides to fall in love with Nicholas, then announces to her friend Matilda that she is ‘almost’ engaged to him. The two young women entertain their beaux to tea, then fall out in rivalry with each other.

Chapter X.   Miss Le Crevey paints a miniature portrait of Kate Nickleby. Ralph Nickleby finds Kate a questionable job as a dressmaker with Madam Mantalini and moves her mother into an empty house he owns.

Chapter XI.   Kate and her mother leave Miss Le Crevey and are taken by Noggs to live in an old run down house in a poor party of the City.

Chapter XII.   Fanny and Matilda repair their disagreement of the day before. Matilda is to be married in three weeks. They meet Nicholas and claim he is in love with Fanny. When he refutes this claim, Fanny vows vengeance on Nicholas, who comforts the persecuted Smike.

Nicholas Nickleby

Nicholas starts for Yorkshire

Chapter XIII.   Smike suddenly runs off from the school, but is hunted down and recaptured. When Squeers starts to administer a public flogging before the assembled boys, Nicholas intervenes and beats Squeers. Nicholas leaves the school to go back to London, and is followed by Smike.

Chapter XIV.   A wedding anniversary party is under way in the rented rooms of the Keriwigs. nTheir neighbour Noggs is in attendance, despatching punch, when Nicholas and Smike arrive.

Chapter XV.   The Squeers have sent a defamatory letter to Ralph Nickleby, denouncing Nicholas. Noggs urges patience. Meanwhile Lillyvick lords it over the party and its members. When the babysitter’s hair catches fire, Nicholas rescues the baby and is admired by everybody as a gentleman and an aristocrat

Chapter XVI.   Next day Nicholas goes in search of a job, but turns down the position of secretary to an unscrupulous member of parliament. Instead, Noggs arranges for him to become private tutor to the Kenwig girls, under the name of Johnson.

Chapter XVII.   Kate starts work at Mantalini’s where she feels demeaned by the nature of her position. The Mantalinis are semi-comic buffoons, somehow connected with Ralph Nickleby.

Chapter XVIII.   Miss Knag has an almost Sapphic crush on Kate, who makes a good impression on visiting customers. But when Kate is chosen to display bonnets instead of Miss Knag, she turns hysterically against her.

Chapter XIX.   Kate in invited to dinner at her uncle’s house. But the guests are all-male boors, and she has been used as bait to lure a rich young lord. One drunken guest tries to attack her. Ralph Nickleby feels the first twinges of conscience regarding his niece.

Chapter XX.   Ralph confronts Kate and her mother with Nicholas’s ‘misdeeds’ (reported by Squeers). Nicholas stands up to Ralph and maintains his innocence – but he is powerless to do anything more. Everything is against him – but he sticks by Smike.

Chapter XXI.   The Mantalinis are bankrupted (by Ralph) and Kate loses her job. She becomes a companion to Mrs Witterly, who suffers from ‘an excess of soul’.

Chapter XXII.   Nicholas decides to leave London. He and Smike walk to Portsmouth, but before they get there Nicholas meets the theatrical manager Vincent Crummles, and in desperation is persuaded to join his troupe.

Chapter XXIII.   When they reach Portsmouth Crummles introduces Nicholas to his band of itinerant ‘actors’, including the ‘infant phenomenon’. Crummles gives Nicholas a French text to translate and plagiarize for performance in a few day’s time.

Chapter XXIV.   Nicholas writes the play for Miss Snevellicci’s benefit performance (one of many) – then has to go out touting for subscriptions.The play is put on, and despite its ridiculous and corny plot is a big success.

Nicholas Nickleby

Mr and Mrs Mantalini in Ralph Nickleby’s Office

Chapter XXV.   Mr Lillyvick the water tax collector arrives to tell Nicholas of his impending marriage to Henrietta Petowker, who is joining the troupe. A comic wedding scene ensues. Nicholas teaches Smike his simple part in Romeo and Juliet.

Chapter XXVI.   Hawk and Verisopht conspire to pursue the pretty Kate. Hawk wishes to trap Verisopht financially. They visit Ralph Nickleby, who wants to entrap them both. Mrs Nickel by arrives and naively hopes that Kate will marry one of these corrupt rakes. Ralph’s conscience pricks him for a second time.

Chapter XXVII.   Mrs Nickleby is fascinated with the idea of upper-class connections. She is visited by Pyke and Pluck who flatter her and invite her to the theatre on behalf of Hawk, who oppresses Kate again. They are also introduced to Mrs Witterly, who is also flattered by the attention of these rakes.

Chapter XXVIII.   Hawk and his entourage become regular visitors chez Mrs Witterly – and continue to oppress Kate. She appeals to her uncle Ralph for help – but he refuses to do anything, and even though he has encouraged their behaviour, he disapproves of it. So does Noggs, who disapproves of his employer Ralph.

Chapter XXIX.   Lenville is jealous of Nicolas’s success in the acting troupe. He offers a challenge, but Nicholas knocks him down. Nicholas communicates with Noggs via post, who replies that Kate might need his protection in the future.

Chapter XXX.   Nicholas prepare to leave the acting company. He goes to dinner, where Mr Snevellicci gets drunks and kisses all the women. An urgent note from Noggs arrives, so Nicholas and Smike leave for London by the morning coach.

Chapter XXXI.   Noggs negotiates with Miss La Crevey to delay telling Nicholas about Kate’s problems on his imminent arrival in ~London – to forestall rash actions.

Chapter XXXII.   Nicholas reaches London and immediately goes in search of Noggs, who has deliberately gone out as part of his plan. Nicholas wanders into a hotel and overhears Hawk maligning Kate. He challenges him, but Hawk refuses to reveal his identity. They fight in the street, and Hawk sustains injuries when his cab overturns.

Chapter XXXIII.   Nicholas removes Kate from Mrs Witterly’s , his mother from her lodgings, and writes to Ralph denouncing him as a villain.

Chapter XXXIV.   Ralph is visited by Mr Mantalini who needs money. Mrs Mantalini argues with her husband., during which time Ralph learns about the coach accident. Mr Squeers arrives, and Ralph quizzes him about Smike’s identity and origins.

Chapter XXXV.   Mrs Nickleby and Kate meet Smike, then Nicholas goes in search of a job, where he meets the improbably philanthropic Mr Cheeryble, who provides him with a well-paid job, a home, and gifts of furniture.

Chapter XXXVI.   Mrs Kenwigs has a baby. The family all congratulate themselves on their future prospects, but when Nicholas arrives with the news that their ‘benefactor’ Lillyvick has married Henrietta Petowker in Portsmouth, they go to pieces ,thinking that their ‘expectations’ have been ruined.

Nicholas Nickleby

Miss Nickleby Introduced to her Uncle’s Friends

Chapter XXXVII.   Nicholas makes a success of his introduction to working at Cheeryble’s, and old Tim Linkinwater’s birthday is celebrated in the office with lots of toasting and good cheer. Mrs Nickleby confides in Nicholas that she is being courted by their next-door neighbour by throwing cucumbers over the wall.

Chapter XXXVIII.   Miss La Crevey thinks that Smike is changing significantly. Ralph Nickleby visits Hawk who is still recovering from his injuries in the coach crash. Lord Verisopht is amongst the rakes but he thinks that Nicholas has acted honourably in defending his sister’s reputation. On his way back home, Smike is captured by Squeers and held prisoner.

Chapter XXXIX.   John Browdie arrives in London with his new bride Matilda Price and her friend Fanny Squeers.. They meet Mr Squeers at the Saracen’s Head That night Browdie helps Smike to escape from Squeers’ clutches.

Chapter XXXX.   Nicholas falls in love with a girl he saw very briefly in the Registry Office. He commissions Noggs to find out who she is and where she lives. He does this and actually arranges a meeting with her late at night.But when they get there it is the wrong girl.

Chapter XXXXI.   The eccentric (mad) man next door continues to pay court to Mrs Nickleby – who is flattered by his attentions, even though she feigns to reject them.

Chapter XXXXII.   Nicholas visits John Browdie at the Saracen’s Head. Whilst they are discussing Fanny Squeers’ lack of marriage prospects, she suddenly appears. There is a comic argument between Fanny and Matilda, then between Squeers and Browdie

Chapter XXXXIII.   Following the altercation at the Saracen’s Head, Nicholas meets Frank Cheeryble, with whom he feels a close bond. Yet he immediately wonders if he is a rival for the mysterious and beautiful girl – to whom he has never spoken. Frank and one of his uncles visit the Nickleby home the following Sunday, and everybody has a good time.

Chapter XXXXIV.   Ralph Nickleby is out collecting debts when he is tracked down by Mr Booker, a former business associate who has been in jail. Booker threatens to reveal compromising information, but Ralph calls his bluff and refuses to help him.There is a fake suicide by Mr Mantalini, then Ralph goes off withSqueers and a stranger, with Noggs in pursuit.

Chapter XXXXV.   Whilst John and Matilda Browdie are at the Nickleby cottage they are interrupted by Ralph Nickleby, Squeers, and Mr Snawley, who claims to be Smike’s estranged father. THey wish to capture Smike and take him back to Yorkshire, but Smike does not want to go.. After they throw out Squeers, Ralph leaves, threatening legal action against Nicholas.

Chapter XXXXVI.   Nicholas relates these incidents to the Cheerybles, who tell him a similar story about the beautiful girl who has devoted herself to an unloving father who is a wastrel. They want to use Nicholas as a means of supplying money to her. This enables him to meet Madeleine Bray and her thankless father.

Chapter XXXXVII.   Ralph Nickleby arrives at his office with Arthur Gride, who relates his plan to marry Madeleine Bray so as to acquire a property she will inherit. Ralph forces him to sign an agreement between them – all overheard by Noggs. They visit Bray and Madeleine and put their plan into motion, hoping that the greedy and heartless Bray will persuade Madeleine to accept.

Chapter XXXXVIII.   Nicholas is upset regarding his role in the supply of money to Madeleine Bray. He then meets up with the Crummles theatrical troupe giving their farewell performances before going to America. There is another lengthy dinner with speeches.

Nicholas Nickleby

Mr Linkinwater Intimates his Approval of Nicholas

Chapter XLIX.   In the Nickleby household Smike is suffering from consumption, but hides it from everyone. The mad old man from next door comes down the chimney in pursuit of Mrs Nickleby, but then changes to Miss La Crevey when he sees her.

Chapter L.   Sir Mulberry Hawk appears at Hampton Races after recuperating abroad. He quarrels with Lord Verisopht, who has a guilty conscience regarding his part in the plot against Kate. That night, after gambling and drinking, they fight a duel, in which Lord Frederick is killed.

Chapter LI.   Arthur Gride selects his clothes for the marriage to Madeleine Bray. Noggs has been approached by the mysteriousMr Brooker, and he tells Nicholas about Gride’s plan to marry Madeleine Bray.

Chapter LII.   Noggs takes Moreleen Kenwig to the barber, where they meet Lillyvick. His wife Henrietta has eloped with a solider, so he is received at the Kenwigs where he reverses the terms of his will in their favour, following much sycophancy on both sides.

Chapter LIII.   Nicholas appeals directly to Madeleine to call off or at least delay the marriage. He explains the plot between her father and Gride. But she refuses: she is sacrificing herself to gain the money promised to support her father. Nicholas then goes to Gride and offers to buy him off, but Gride refuses.

Chapter LIV.   Ralph and Arthur Gride arrive at the Bray house on the morning of the wedding, but suddenly Nicholas and Kate arrive to confront them and take Madeleine away. There is a stand off, and then Bray drops dead upstairs. Nicholas takes Madeleine away telling Ralph that his business has collapsed.

Chapter LV.   Mrs Nickleby is convinced that Frank Cheeryble is in love with Kate, who is looking after Madeleine as she recovers. Mrs Nickleby asks Nicholas to encourage the relationship, but he warns against it on the grounds that they are poor, whereas Frank has ‘expectations’ from his uncles. Nicholas is then commissioned to take the ailing Smike to Devon for convalescence.

Chapter LVI.   Ralph has lost £10,000 in a bank crash. Returning to Gribe’s house, they discover that old Peg has stolen incriminating papers and absconded. Ralph devises an elaborate plan of revenge (on Nicholas and just about everybody else) which includes the Snawley and Smike relationship, Madeleine’s inheritance, and recovery of Gride’s stolen documents. He enlists the services of Squeers to do the dirty work and carefully excludes all mention of himself from the arrangements.

Chapter LVII.   Ralph has located old Peg and Squeers visits her in a drunken state. He persuades her to show him the documents – but whilst they are inspecting them Frank Cheeryble and Noggs sneak into the room and knock Squeers out.

Chapter LVIII.   Nicholas takes Smike to Devon where they share a bucolic and tranquil existence. Smike has a fleeting vision of the man who first took him to Dotheboys Hall, reveals that he has been in love with Kate , and dies.

Chapter LIX.   An anxious Ralph is visited by Charles Cheeryble who wishes to warn him of something – but he dismisses him. Ralph goes off in search Noggs, Squeers, and Snawley, but none of them are to be found. So he goes to Cheerybles where he is confronted by Noggs who has unravelled the whole pilot. They offer him an honourable escape, but he scorns it.

Chapter LX.   Ralph tracks down Squeers at the police station where he is being held on remand. There are signs that even Squeers is turning against him. Then he returns to Cheerybles, where they produce Ralph’s former employee Mr Brooker, who reveals that Smike was Ralph’s son. Ralph suddenly disappears.

Chapter LXI.   Nicholas returns from Devon and learns that Kate has refused an offer of marriage from Frank Cheeryble on grounds of differences in their social positions. Nicholas vows to do the same regarding Madeleine, and asks the Cheerybles to remove her from his mother’s house.

Chapter LXII.   Ralph retreats to his house, followed by a black cloud, and is oppressed by feelings of defeat and the fact that his enemy Nicholas was the person who looked after his own son, Smike. He goes into the attic and hangs himself.

Chapter LXIII.   The Cheerybles summon everyone to a dinner at which the details of Madeleine’s inheritance are made known and the two couples – Frank and Kate, and Nicolas and Madeleine – are united.Then Tim Linkinwater proposes to Miss La Crevey, who accepts, much to Mrs Nickleby’s disgust.

Chapter LXIV.   Nicholas travels to Yorkshire to see his friend John Browdie and brings him up to date with all the news. It is revealed that Squeers has been found guilty and transported for seven years. John Browdie rides over to Dotheboys Hall where the boys revolt against Mrs Squeers and her two offspring. They then all run away.

Conclusion.   Nicholas marries Madeleine on the same day that Frank marries Kate. Nicholas becomes a partner in the firm. Ralph’s money is left un-touched and reverts to the State. Gride escapes punishment, but is then murdered. Hawk lives abroad, but on return is jailed for debt, where he dies.

Mont Blanc pen

Mont Blanc – Charles Dickens special edition

Nicholas Nickleby – principal characters
Old Mr Nickleby Nicholas’s grandfather
Ralph Nickleby his elder son, who becomes a speculator
Nicholas Nickleby his younger son, who loses his money and dies
Mrs Nickleby his widow, a naive and gullible woman
Nicholas Nickleby his son, good-natured and personable (19)
Kate Nickleby Nicholas’s pretty sister
Newman Noggs one-eyed clerk to Ralph Nickleby, ‘a decayed gentleman’
Wackford Squeers an unscrupulous, greedy, and brutal ‘schoolmaster’
Mrs Squeers his equally vulgar and stupid wife
Fanny Squeers their plain daughter (23) who falls for Nicholas
Smike a desperate abandoned boy, unpaid skivvy to Squeers (19)
Miss Le Crevey an artist in portrait miniatures
Matilda Price a pretty friend (and rival) of Fanny Squeers
John Browdie her fiancée, a tall Yorkshire corn-merchant with a Geordie accent
Mr Mantalini (actually Murtle) a ridiculous fop
Mrs Mantalini his (new) wife, a dressmaker
Mr Kenwig a turner in ivory
Mr Lillyvick a pompous collector of water taxes
Mr Crowl a dubious associate of Noggs who wears a red wig
Miss Knag garrulous and hysterical shop manager at Mantalinis
Mortimer Knag her brother, a gloomy bookseller and novelist, former admirer of Mrs Mantalini
Mrs Julia Witterly a social climbing hypochondriac who employs Kate as a companion
Henrietta Petowker marries Lillyvick, then leaves him for another man
Sir Mulberry Hawk a lecherous nobleman who pursues Kate
Lord Frederick Verisopht a simple dupe of Hawk, who kills him in a duel
The Cheerybles twin brothers and philanthropists
Frank Cheeryble their nephew, who falls in love with Kate
Timothy Linkinwater their chief clerk, who marries Miss La Crevey
Mr Walter Bray a selfish and dying miser
Madeleine Bray his beautiful and devoted daughter
Arthur Gride an old, greedy, and corrupt miser who tries to marry Madeleine
Peg Sliderskew his old and ugly housekeeper
Mr Brooker an ex-convict and formerly Ralph’s clerk
Further reading

Biography

Red button Peter Ackroyd, Dickens, London: Mandarin, 1991.

Red button John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, Forgotten Books, 2009.

Red button Edgar Johnson, Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph, Little Brown, 1952.

Red button Fred Kaplan, Dickens: A Biography, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

Red button Frederick G. Kitton, The Life of Charles Dickens: His Life, Writings and Personality, Lexden Publishing Limited, 2004.

Red button Michael Slater, Charles Dickens, Yale University Press, 2009.

Nicholas Nickleby

Red button Bernard Bergonzi, ‘Nicholas Nickleby’, Dickens and the Twentieth Century, ed. John Gross and Gabriel Pearson, London: Routledge, 1962

Red button John Bowen, ‘Performing Business, Training Ghosts: Transcending Nickleby, ELH 63, 1996.

Red button V.C. Clinton-Baddeley, ‘Snevellicci’, Dickensian 57, 1961

Red button Phillip Collins , Dickens and Education, London: Macmillan, 1963

Red button Norman Russell, ‘Nicholas Nickleby and the Commercial Crisis of 1825′, Dickensian 77, 1981.

Red button Paul Schlike, Dickens and Popular Entertainment, London: Allen and Unwin, 1985.

Red button Michael Slater, The Composition and Monthly Publication of Nicholas Nickleby, London: Scholar Press, 1973.

General criticism

Red button G.H. Ford, Dickens and His Readers, Norton, 1965.

Red button P.A.W. Collins, Dickens and Crime, London: Palgrave, 1995.

Red button Philip Collins (ed), Dickens: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1982.

Red button Andrew Sanders, Authors in Context: Charles Dickens, Oxford University Press, 2009.

Red button Jeremy Tambling, Going Astray: Dickens and London, London: Longman, 2008.

Red button Donald Hawes, Who’s Who in Dickens, London: Routledge, 2001.

 

Other works by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens Pickwick PapersPickwick Papers (1836-37) was Dickens’ first big success. It was issued in twenty monthly parts and is not so much a novel as a series of loosely linked sketches and changing characters featured in reports to the Pickwick Club. These recount comic excursions to Rochester, Dingley Dell, and Bath; duels and elopements; Christmas festivities; Mr Pickwick inadvertently entering the bedroom of a middle-aged lady at night; and in the end a happy marriage. Much light-hearted fun, and a host of memorable characters.
Charles Dickens Pickwick Papers Buy the book here

 

Charles Dickens Oliver TwistOliver Twist (1837-38) expresses Dickens’ sense of the vulnerability of children. Oliver is a foundling, raised in a workhouse, who escapes suffering by running off to London. There he falls into the hands of a gang of thieves controlled by the infamous Fagin. He is pursued by the sinister figure of Monks who has secret information about him. The plot centres on the twin issues of personal identity and a secret inheritance (which surface again in Great Expectations). Emigration, prison, and violent death punctuate a cascade of dramatic events. This is the early Victorian novel in fine melodramatic form. Recommended for beginners to Dickens.
Charles Dickens Oliver Twist Buy the book here

Charles Dickens – web links

Charles Dickens at Mantex
Biographical notes, book reviews, tutorials and study guides, free eTexts, videos, adaptations for cinema and television, further web links.

Dickens basic information Charles Dickens at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary techniques, his influence and legacy, extensive bibliography, and further web links.

Charles Dickens at Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts of the major works in a variety of formats.

Dickens on the Web
Major jumpstation including plots and characters from the novels, illustrations, Dickens on film and in the theatre, maps, bibliographies, and links to other Dickens sites.

The Dickens Page
Chronology, eTexts available, maps, filmography, letters, speeches, biographies, criticism, and a hyper-concordance.

Charles Dickens at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of the major novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages

A Charles Dickens Journal
An old HTML website with detailed year-by-year (and sometimes day-by-day) chronology of events, plus pictures.

Hyper-Concordance to Dickens
Locate any word or phrase in the major works – find that quotation or saying, in its original context.

Dickens at the Victorian Web
Biography, political and social history, themes, settings, book reviews, articles, essays, bibliographies, and related study resources.

Charles Dickens – Gad’s Hill Place
Something of an amateur fan site with ‘fun’ items such as quotes, greetings cards, quizzes, and even a crossword puzzle.

© Roy Johnson 2014

More on Charles Dickens
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
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Night and Day

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tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot. web links

Night and Day was Virginia Woolf’s second full-length novel. It was first published by Duckworth and Company in October 1919. (This was the publishing company owned by Woolf’s step-brother Gerald Duckworth.) An American edition appeared under the imprint of George H. Doran in 1920

Night and Day

first edition – Duckworth 1919

Night and Day – critical commentary

The main theme

Virginia Woolf had been writing about the plight of the young unmarried middle-class woman since her earliest works such as the short story Phyllis and Rosamund (1906). She continued to develop her observations and criticisms about women’s education and their role in society in her non-fiction polemic A Room of One’s Own (1929) and these ideas were further developed into her wholesale attack on the patriarchal nature of British society in Three Guineas (1938).

Katharine Hilbery has not been educated or trained to do anything useful except live at home with her parents. She feels oppressed by the family and its illustrious history, and her only possibility of change is the option of marriage, which is why she initially feels doomed to accept William Rodney’s offer when it comes along.

Katherine is very conscious of being cut off from the world of work – and she actively wishes she had a job. She sees this as an antidote to the somewhat pointless life she leads as an unmarried young woman living at home where she ‘helps’ her mother in the vanity project of writing her grandfather’s biography.

Work

The novel makes a strong critique of the emptiness of a young unmarried woman’s life, and contrasts this with the apparent satisfaction of being engaged in purposeful work.

The suffragist Mary Datchet is very conscious of her own independence, and proud of the fact that she has a ‘room of her own’ and works in an office for a cause in which she believes. However, she does not get paid for the work she does, and it is no surprise to eventually find that she is the daughter of a clergyman, and is thus being kept economically by her family. She is engaged in voluntary charity work, not paid employment; and she is not truly self-sufficient.

Woolf appears to have slightly romantic ideas about the nature and conditions of paid employment. Mary doesn’t start work until 10.00 am; she has expensive lunches; and she lives in central London in rooms which are spacious enough to host meetings – none of which she would be able to afford without the financial backing of her family.

Ralph Denham also doesn’t start work until 10.00 am, and seems to have endless amounts of free time for extended walks through London, for afternoon teas, and for visiting people in what would normally be working hours. He arranges to meet Katharine Hilbery for a serious discussion about his future in Kew Gardens – at three o’clock in the afternoon.

Ralph is bored by his own work as a solicitor’s clerk, and has romantic aspirations to be a journalist – having published a review in Mr Hilbery’s Critical Review. Woolf appears to be uncertain about his exact status: sometimes he claims to be a ‘solicitor’ but on other occasions he is described as a ‘solicitor’s clerk’. There is a big difference between the two.

William Rodney is supposed to be a government clerk – yet he has enough money to live in style; he owns a piano and collects expensive rare editions; and the Hilbery family think he is an acceptable match for Katharine. He too is free to attend a tea party in Cheyne Walk at half-past four in the afternoon

It’s as if Woolf didn’t want to populate her novel entirely with upper middle class people who lived off private incomes and investments, but could hardly conceptualise the lives of real working people. The result is that the three characters of Ralph Denham, William Rodney, and Mary Datchet are cyphers for working people, and are less convincing fictional characters as a result.

The text is modernist in that it reflects the technology of twentieth century life. People make telephone calls from their own homes (requesting a number from an operator) they take rides in cabs, the underground, and the omnibus (not yet abbreviated to ‘bus’) – yet it has to be said that the historical setting remains slightly vague. The only certainty is that the events pre-date 1914.

Weaknesses

The romantic oscillations and changes of mind between the four principal characters are dragged out to inordinate length. The indecisions and reversals of feelings might accurately reflect uncertainty in people’s feelings and their choices of romantic attachment, but something like twenty chapters of will-she, won’t-she (and will-he won’t-he) plus rather amateurishly orchestrated coincidental meetings put a great strain on the reader’s patience.

This element of the novel reaches almost farcical proportions in the passages dealing with William, Katherine, and Cassandra. For instance when William begs Katherine to return to their former engagement she tells him that Cassandra loves him more, at which he immediately reverses his choice and is united with Cassandra, who has been listening to the conversation in concealment – all within the space of a few short paragraphs. This is the material of a Brian Rix Whitehall farce. The novel becomes more like a radio or television soap opera than a carefully constructed novel.

If weakness can have a climax, the novel reaches one in its final chapters when the two male suitors are (quite reasonably) banned from the house by Mr Hilbery. But they are then forgiven and reinstated the following day, with no explanation given. Everyone is happy, as in a children’s story, and the serious social issues raised by the Ralph Denham—Katharine Hilbery match simply dissolve in a vaporous and false ‘resolution’.

It has been emphasised throughout the novel that Ralph Denham has no money, and is responsible for supporting the remainder of his family. It stretches credulity and the conventions of the realist novel that a family such as the Hilberys would permit their daughter to marry with so few prospects of being decently kept.

Moreover, Denham’s own prospects are also not resolved in any detail. He has been dissatisfied with his (ill-defined) work throughout the novel, occasionally nursing a fantasy of living in a cottage and writing a book, but this comes to nothing – so he is no further forward at the end of events than he was at their beginning.

Woolf also seems to forget that she endows him with the dubious habit of gambling with his scant savings on the Stock Exchange at the start of the novel – but this is never mentioned again after the first chapters. He neither loses money, nor pulls off a profitable investment. The issue is simply forgotten.

There are too many named but inconsequential characters cluttering the text. For instance, Mary Datchet’s brothers and sisters are introduced – Elizabeth, her older sister, her brother Edward who is an estate agent, and Christopher who is a law student. This might establish the social status of the children of a provincial rector, but they serve no purpose in the novel whatever, since they never reappear.

Denham’s college friend Harry Sandys is introduced in the middle of the novel, and is never mentioned again. The family relative Cyril Alardyce is living with a woman to whom he is not married, and much is made of the issue, but it is not related to the main events of the novel in any meaningful way, and once a visit of concern has been made, the topic disappears, never to be mentioned again.

Katharine’s interest in mathematics is established as her individualist reaction to the weight of social convention that she finds so oppressive. She is expected to pour tea and make polite conversation with visitors but (we are expected to believe) she has a private passion which provides a separate life outside this public realm, located in the abstract realm of numerical calculations. The problem is that this private passion is never dramatised or expressed in any way. Indeed, it is simply not mentioned again after its first appearance in the text.

These weaknesses are what would normally be described as ‘loose ends’ – that is, issues which are not successfully integrated or resolved in the overall scheme of the novel. But there are simply too many of them, and these weaknesses, coupled with the poorly executed finale to the main drama, suggest a novel which has simply not been carefully conceived or written.

Night and Day – study resources

Night and Day Night and Day – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Night and Day Night and Day – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Night and Day Night and Day – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Night and Day Night and Day – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Night and Day Night and Day – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Night and Day The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Night and Day Night and Day – Vintage Classics – Amazon UK

Night and Day Night and Day – Vintage Classics – Amazon US

Night and Day Virginia Woolf – biographical notes

Night and Day The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Night and Day Selected Essays – by Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Night and Day The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Night and Day Virginia Woolf – Authors in Context – Amazon UK

Night and Day Virginia Woolf at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Night and Day Virginia Woolf at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study resources

Night and Day

Night and Day – plot summary

Chapter I. During a Sunday afternoon tea party in Cheyne Walk, Katharine Hilbery shows Ralph Denham some of the relics and souvenirs of her illustrious family. They spar with each other about issues of class and family traditions.

Chapter II. Ralph returns to his lower middle-class family home in Highgate, his mind full of Katharine and the comforts of her fashionable home. He wishes to study alone, but his elder sister Joan brings him news of a family problem which they haven’t the money to solve.

Chapter III. This chapter recounts the history of Katharine’s famous family – of which she is the only child. She and her mother are making no progress with a biography of her grandfather, the famous poet Richard Alardyce. Katharine tries to create a disciplined approach to the task, but her mother lacks all sense of proportion, selection, structure, or purpose. Katharine looks after her mother, and has a secret interest in mathematics.

Chapter IV. Ralph meets Katharine again when he attends a meeting hosted by his suffragist friend Mary Datchet. The speaker William Rodney performs badly. Katharine and Mary discuss work, and Ralph again spars with Katharine regarding class. Katharine leaves the meeting with William Rodney.

Chapter V. Ralph and his friend Harry Sandys follow Katharine and Rodney through the streets to the Embankment. Rodney wants to marry Katharine, but he has essentially chauvinistic views about women. He insists on sending her home in a cab. On then meeting Ralph, Rodney invites him back home for a drink. Ralph is impressed by the cultivated ambiance, and warms to him. He borrows a play Rodney is writing, and a few days later receives an expensive rare edition Rodney has sent him from his collection.

Chapter VI. Mary is happy to begin each day in her own room, and she is very conscious of being a ‘worker’ – although she does not get paid. She works in the morning, then over a substantial lunch she fantasises about Ralph, with whom she is in love. In the afternoon Katharine visits the office, where she becomes the recipient of proselytising on behalf of the suffragist movement. When Ralph arrives there is tension between Katherine and Mary. Ralph leaves with Katharine and then on a bus ride home they return to the subject of culture and his poverty.

Chapter VII. Katherine spends the evening at home having dinner with her parents. Her mother nostalgically recalls the family’s complex history. Katharine remains conscious of the suffragist office.

Chapter VIII. Katharine receives a proposal of marriage from William Rodney and a letter from her aunt regarding her cousin Cyril Alardyce, who is living with a woman to whom he is not married. She discusses the family problems with her father, but he disclaims any responsibility and leaves her to report the news to her mother.

Chapter IX. Katharine feels oppresses by her home, her family, and its history. Mrs Hilbery loses herself in reminiscence instead of working on the biography. Mrs Milvain suddenly appears to discuss the case of Cyril Alardyce. They are then joined by another spinster relative.

Chapter X. Joan thinks anxiously but romantically about her brother Ralph’s future. He is divided between dreams and unrealised ambitions. He has odd hobbies, and he gambles on the Stock Exchange. He goes to see his friend Mary Datchet, even though his thoughts are full of Katharine. He patronises Mary, and is unaware of her strong feelings for him.

Chapter XI. Katharine has written to William Rodney refusing his offer of marriage.She visits his rooms for tea and they talk unsuccessfully about poetry. Yet she feels doomed to marry him, and reverses her decision.

Chapter XII. Ralph visits the Hilbery house and unexpectedly finds Katharine at home. They engage in the usual sparring, but they are interrupted by the arrival of Katharine’s aunts who turn the conversation to literature and family reminiscences. Ralph is angry when they reveal that Katharine is engaged to marry William Rodney. He leaves abruptly in a state of acute disillusionment, and feels he has been betrayed.

Chapter XIII. Ralph meets Mary Datchet in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He is in very low spirits, but will not say what is bothering him. She tries to encourage him, and invites him to her family home for Christmas.

Chapter XIV. Mary goes on to a committee meeting where she finds it difficult to concentrate because of her thoughts about Ralph. She goes home and is visited by Katharine and William Rodney who announce their engagement. She finds something attractive about Katharine, whom she compares to Ralph.

Chapter XV. Ralph visits Mary at her family home in Lincolnshire over Christmas. The scene is one of deep rural life in an old house. He settles comfortably in the welcoming hospitality of the family and feels rejuvenated by the country ambiance.

Chapter XVI. Katharine is also in Lincolnshire at nearby Stogdon House for the Christmas holidays. She sits in the garden at night, worrying about her relationship to William Rodney. She shares her feelings with her favourite cousin Henry Otway. They are interrupted by William Rodney, who is jealous and possessive regarding Katharine.

Chapter XVII. Katharine tries to discuss marriage with her mother and her aunt Charlotte. She cannot understand why her feelings have changed since leaving London, but she realises that she does not love the man she is due to marry. A party from the house sets off for a ritual outing to Lincoln.

Chapter XVIII. Ralph and Mary are walking through the fields towards Lincoln. She is in love with him: he is in love with Katharine, but does not mention it. He suddenly invents a romantic plan to give up work, live in the countryside, and write a book – but the plan noticeably excludes Mary. Ralph is momentarily tempted to ask Mary to marry him, but when he finally realises that she loves him, he changes his mind. When he sees Katharine in the street, Mary finally realises that he is in love with her. The two groups meet by accident and Ralph tells Katharine about his ‘plans’. William Rodney and Katharine then argue, and she tells him that she doesn’t love him, whereupon he is distraught, and cries, after which she changes her mind and agrees to marry him.

Chapter XIX. As Ralph and Mary walk back from Lincoln he suddenly asks her to marry him – but she realises his heart isn’t in it, and she refuses. They eventually, and reluctantly agree to remain friends, but neither of them feels very happy about the arrangement.

Chapter XX. Mary returns to her work in the wake of her disappointment. She feels disillusioned and unable to fully believe in the cause for which she is working. But she eventually adopts a stoical attitude and accepts that she might not be happy, but that she wishes to face up to the Truth.

Chapter XXI. Mary goes home and tries to write, still thinking about Ralph. She is visited by Katharine, towards whom she feels hostile. Both women want to unburden themselves about their feelings. Finally Mary reveals the full truth – that she is in love with Ralph, who is in love with Katharine. Mary feels a complex mixture of humiliation and happiness at having made the revelation.

Chapter XXII. Katharine is inspired by what she has learned, and is late for an appointment with William Rodney. But when she arrives full of intention, he waves his newfound interest in Cassandra Otway in her face as a provocation. They discuss their lack of romantic interest in each other in an emotionally sadistic manner. Katharine almost persuades him that he is in love with Cassandra – but their discussion is interrupted by the sudden arrival of Ralph.

Chapter XXIII. They all feel very awkward with each other, and are unable to speak their minds. Ralph leaves with Katharine, and makes a full revelation of his feelings about her. He also confesses his mistreatment of Mary. Katharine is privately elated by what she hears, but does not respond. Ralph goes home feeling angry about William Rodney.

Chapter XXIV. Mrs Hilbery develops an enthusiasm for Shakespeare, and Katharine is restless. Katharine invites her cousin Cassandra to visit them. She is puzzled by the connections between Ralph, William, Mary, herself, and now Cassandra. She feels that the ‘love’ in these connections should somehow be cherished. She arrives home to find William Rodney at tea. They spar with each other regarding Cassandra, and put their engagement on hold whilst he tests out the possibilities of a relationship with Cassandra- but without making it known publicly.

Chapter XXV. Katharine meets Ralph in Kew Gardens and is impressed by his botanical knowledge. He offers her a compact of honesty and friendship – and she accepts it.

Chapter XXVI. Cassandra Otway arrives in London, young and enthusiastic. There is a dinner party at the Hilyers where Katharine senses that William is getting closer to Cassandra. She leaves them together and visits Mary. There she meets Mr Basnett, a social reformer. When she arrives back home, William and Cassandra are both very happy.

Chapter XXVII. William, Katharine, Ralph, and Cassandra visit the zoo. William is angry and argues with Katharine. Ralph decides to humiliate Katharine by taking her to his home for tea. She is shocked aesthetically but warms to the conviviality of close family life. Ralph feels that his plan has failed, and they draw closer in their friendship pact again. He gives up his plan to live in a cottage.

Chapter XXVIII. Ralph tries to exorcise his obsession with Katharine, but fails completely. He wants to communicate his feelings to someone, and goes to see Mary, where he inflicts them on her. Then he goes to the Hilbery house, where he meets William leaving. They admit to each other that they are in love with and suffering because of Katharine.

Chapter XXIX. That night Cassandra reveals to Katharine that she has been affronted by a declaration from William – which causes Katharine to reveal that they are no longer engaged. Next day Mrs Milvain arrives to say that people are talking about the irregular ‘engagement’. William arrives to tell Katharine that they should drop the connection with Cassandra and revert to their former fully-engaged status. Katharine reveals that Cassandra is in love with him, whereupon he changes his mind. Cassandra has overheard their conversation, and is united with William.

Chapter XXX. Ralph has been loitering outside the house, hoping to see Katharine. When he is admitted, Rodney’s new engagement is revealed, and Ralph is left to talk with Katharine alone. They both feel ambiguous about their love for each other. Mrs Hilbery interrupts them to discuss poetry.

Chapter XXXI. Cassandra wants to be married on the same day as Katharine, who is still uncertain about the true nature of her relationship to Ralph. She feels under pressure from Cassandra and Rodney. She visits Mary (who is no longer in love with Ralph, though she regrets the fact) and they search for him fruitlessly throughout London. But when Katharine goes back home he is waiting for her and she collapses with love for him.

Chapter XXXII. The two couples celebrate by going out to a music hall, then for the next two days go to Greenwich and Hampton Court. Mrs Milvain then reports her suspicions to Mr Hilbery. When he questions Katharine she tells him that her engagement to Rodney has been mutually called off. Mr Hilbery demands explanations from Katharine, who will only say that she is no longer engaged. She and Ralph are suffering some sort of metaphysical problem about their relationship.

Chapter XXXIII. Mr Hilbery bans Ralph and William from the house, and sends Cassandra back home to Lincolnshire. Mrs Hilbery returns from Stratford and is entirely sympathetic to Katharine’s problem. She goes out to collect Ralph and William and brings them back to Cheyne Walk. They are joined by Cassandra who has missed her train. All is forgiven, and the two couples become engaged.

Chapter XXXIV. After dinner Ralph and Katharine take a bus ride and walk to Mary Datchet’s rooms – but Ralph cannot bring himself to go in and tell her their news.

Night and Day

Oxford World Classics edition

Night and Day – characters
Richard Alardyce a great 19 century poet – Katharine’s grandfather
Mr Trevor Hilbery editor of the Critical Review – Katharine’s father
Mrs Hilbery Alardyce’s only child – Katharine’s mother
Katharine Hilbery their only child (27)
Ralph Denham a solicitor’s clerk (29)
Joan Denham his elder sister (33)
Mary Datchet a suffragist volunteer (25)
William Rodney a government clerk and aesthete
Harry Sandys a college friend of Denham
Mrs Celia Milvain Katharine’s interfering aunt – Hilbery’s sister
Cyril Alardyce lecturer at workmen’s college – Katharine’s cousin
Reverend Wyndham Datchet Mary’s father – a rector
Elizabeth Datchet Mary’s elder sister
Edward Datchet an estate agent – Mary’s brother
Christopher Datchet a law student
Henry Otway Katharine’s favourite cousin in Lincolnshire
Lady Charlotte Otway Katharine’s aunt
Cassandra Otway Katharine’s attractive cousin (22)
Horace Basnett a young radical social reformer
Other works by Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf To the LighthouseTo the Lighthouse (1927) is the second of the twin jewels in the crown of her late experimental phase. It is concerned with the passage of time, the nature of human consciousness, and the process of artistic creativity. Woolf substitutes symbolism and poetic prose for any notion of plot, and the novel is composed as a tryptich of three almost static scenes – during the second of which the principal character Mrs Ramsay dies – literally within a parenthesis. The writing is lyrical and philosophical at the same time. Many critics see this as her greatest achievement, and Woolf herself realised that with this book she was taking the novel form into hitherto unknown territory.
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Woolf - OrlandoOrlando (1928) is one of her lesser-known novels, although it’s critical reputation has risen in recent years. It’s a delightful fantasy which features a character who changes sex part-way through the book – and lives from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Using this device (which turns out to be strangely credible) Woolf explores issues of gender and identity as her hero-heroine moves through a variety of lives and personal adventures. Orlando starts out as an emissary to the Court of St James, lives through friendships with Swift and Alexander Pope, and ends up motoring through the west end of London on a shopping expedition in the 1920s. The character is loosely based on Vita Sackville-West, who at one time was Woolf’s lover. The novel itself was described by Nigel Nicolson (Sackville-West’s son) as ‘the longest and most charming love-letter in literature’.
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Kew GardensKew Gardens is a collection of experimental short stories in which Woolf tested out ideas and techniques which she then later incorporated into her novels. After Chekhov, they represent the most important development in the modern short story as a literary form. Incident and narrative are replaced by evocations of mood, poetic imagery, philosophic reflection, and subtleties of composition and structure. The shortest piece, ‘Monday or Tuesday’, is a one-page wonder of compression. This collection is a cornerstone of literary modernism. No other writer – with the possible exception of Nadine Gordimer, has taken the short story as a literary genre as far as this.
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Virginia Woolf: BiographyVirginia Woolf is a readable and well illustrated biography by John Lehmann, who at one point worked as her assistant and business partner at the Hogarth Press. It is described by the blurb as ‘A critical biography of Virginia Woolf containing illustrations that are a record of the Bloomsbury Group and the literary and artistic world that surrounded a writer who is immensely popular today’. This is an attractive and very accessible introduction to the subject which has been very popular with readers ever since it was first published..
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Virginia Woolf – web links

Red button Virginia Woolf at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major works, book reviews, studies of the short stories, bibliographies, web links, study resources.

Virginia Woolf web links Blogging Woolf
Book reviews, Bloomsbury related issues, links, study resources, news of conferences, exhibitions, and events, regularly updated.

Virginia Woolf web links Virginia Woolf at Wikipedia
Full biography, social background, interpretation of her work, fiction and non-fiction publications, photograph albumns, list of biographies, and external web links

Virginia Woolf web links Virginia Woolf at Gutenberg
Selected eTexts of the novels The Voyage Out, Night and Day, Jacob’s Room, and the collection of stories Monday or Tuesday in a variety of digital formats.

Virginia Woolf web links Woolf Online
An electronic edition and commentary on To the Lighthouse with notes on its composition, revisions, and printing – plus relevant extracts from the diaries, essays, and letters.

Virginia Woolf web links Hyper-Concordance to Virginia Woolf
Search texts of all the major novels and essays, word by word – locate quotations, references, and individual terms

Red button Virginia Woolf – a timeline in phtographs
A collection of well and lesser-known photographs documenting Woolf’s life from early childhood, through youth, marriage, and fame – plus some first edition book jackets – to a soundtrack by Philip Glass. They capture her elegant appearance, the big hats, and her obsessive smoking. No captions or dates, but well worth watching.

Virginia Woolf web links Women’s History Walk in Bloomsbury
Tour of literary and political homes in Bloomsbury – including Gordon Square, Gower Street, Bedford Square, Tavistock Square, plus links to women’s history web sites.

Virginia Woolf web links Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
Bulletins of events, annual lectures, society publications, and extensive links to Woolf and Bloomsbury related web sites

Virginia Woolf web links BBC Audio Essay – A Eulogy to Words
Charming sound recording of radio talk given by Virginia Woolf in 1937 – a podcast accompanied by a slideshow of photographs.

Virginia Woolf web links A Family Photograph Albumn
Leslie Stephen compiled a photograph album and wrote an epistolary memoir, known as the “Mausoleum Book,” to mourn the death of his wife, Julia, in 1895 – an archive at Smith College – Massachusetts

Virginia Woolf web links Virginia Woolf first editions
Hogarth Press book jacket covers of the first editions of Woolf’s novels, essays, and stories – largely designed by her sister, Vanessa Bell.

Virginia Woolf web links Virginia Woolf – on video
Biographical studies and documentary videos with comments on Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group and the social background of their times.

Virginia Woolf web links Virginia Woolf Miscellany
An archive of academic journal essays 2003—2014, featuring news items, book reviews, and full length studies.

© Roy Johnson 2015

More on Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf – web links
Virginia Woolf – greatest works
Virginia Woolf – criticism
More on the Bloomsbury Group

Nightwood

by

an experimental poetic-imagist novel

Nightwood was first published in 1936 when Djuna Barnes was at the height of her short-lived fame as a doyenne of the literary modernists. She was published by Faber and Faber, and the book was personally endorsed by its editor in chief at that time, her fellow American T.S.Eliot The novel has been kept alive and in print ever since on the strength of his enthusiastic preface, whilst Barnes herself sunk rapidly after its publication into an unproductive alcoholism for more or less the rest of her life, living on an allowance supplied by her rich patroness, Peggy Guggenheim.

NightwoodIt’s easy to see why Eliot was a supporter. Barnes uses the same techniques of literary collage, fragmentation, and striking if unrelated images as he had made famous in The Waste Land. And she’s also much given to the sort of semi-mystical abstract generalisation that characterise The Four Quartets.

The narrative such as it is, comprises a series of interlocking character sketches. A portrait of the garrulous transvestite Doctor O’Connor is followed by ‘Baron’ Felix Volkbein and his failed marriage to Robin Vote, who then forms a lesbian relationship with Nora Flood (a thinly disguised portrait of Barnes herself). When Robin meets the rich and much married Jenny Petherbridge they run away together, taking with them Sylvia, a young English girl, who is herself in love with Robin. Nora spends long periods in acute anguish, pining after the elusive Robin. She appeals to the doctor for sympathy, to which he responds with lengthy inconsequential monologues which stretch on for several pages at a time:

The almost fossilized state of our recollection is attested to by our murderers and those who read every detail of crime with a passionate and hot interest … It is only by such extreme measures that the average man can remember something long ago, truly, not that he remembers, but that crime itself is the door to an accumulation, a way to lay hands on the shoulder of a past that is still vibrating.

Barnes’s prose style is characterised by long convoluted sentences in which the subject switches from one topic to another without any apparent reason. She also uses extravagant similes and metaphors that are over-elaborated in a way which takes attention away from any perceptible story:

As the altar of a church would present but a barren stylisation but for the uncalculated offerings of the confused and humble; as the courage of a woman is made suddenly made martial and sorrowful by the rose thrust among the more decorous blooms by the hand of a lover suffering the violence of the overlapping of the permission to bestow a last embrace, and its withdrawal making a vanishing and infinitesimal bull’s eye of that which had a moment before been a bouyant and showy bosom, by dragging time out of his bowels (for a lover knows two times, that which he is given, and that which he must make – so Felix was astonished to find that the most touching flowers laid on the altar he had raised to his imagination were placed there by the people of the underworld, and that the reddest was to be the rose of the doctor.

The nearest equivalents to this sort of literary mannerism that come to mind are William Faulkner and Gertrude Stein (both her contemporaries). The novel was considered scandalous at the time of its appearance, largely because of the lesbian theme. But behind the anguish suffered by Nora about her relationship with the promiscuous Robin, there is nothing remotely explicitly sexual between them. In fact none of the characters have any meaningful connection with each other at all. They seem to exist merely as verhicles for Barnes’s gothic imagination and her penchant for poetic image-making.

It is not a book which suggests that subsequent readings will yield up further coherence or meaning, but maybe like The Well of Loneliness which was published only a few years earlier (1928) it is a book of its time which helped to throw off the shackles of Edwardianism after the horrors of the first world war, and opened up the era of modern personal liberty which we now all take for granted.

Nightwood Buy the book at Amazon UK

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© Roy Johnson 2012

Djuna Barnes, Nightwood, London: Faber, 2007, pp.192, ISBN: 057123528X

Nina Hamnett biography

by

artist, modernist, and the Queen of Bohemia

Nina Hamnett (1890-1956) was born in Tenby, south-west Wales. She endured a largely unhappy childhood, but her skill at drawing enabled her to escape her miserable life at home (rather like her near-contemporary Dora Carrington). She studied at the Pelham Art School and the London School of Art between 1906 and 1910.

Nina Hamnett biographyIn 1911 she launched herself into the London art world on the strength of a fifty pound advance on an inheritance from her uncle and a stipend of two shillings and sixpence a week from her aunts. There she socialised in the Cafe Royal with the likes of Augustus John, Walter Sickert, and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. She became very popular as a result of her high spirits, her devil-may-care attitude, and her sexual promiscuity. Like other women at the time revelling in a newfound independence, she had her hair cut short in a ‘crophead’ style (what we would now call a basin cut) and she wore eccentric clothing:

I wore in the daytime a clergyman’s hat, a check coat, and a skirt with red facings … white stockings and men’s dancing pumps and was stared at in the Tottenham Court Road. One had to do something to celebrate one’s freedom and escape from home,

It was said that at this phase in her life Nina Hamnett had the knack of being in the right place at the right time. In 1914 she went to live in Montparnasse, Paris, immediately meeting on her first night there the Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani. He introduced her to Picasso, Serge Dighilev, and Jean Cocteau, and she went to live at the famous artist’s residence of La Ruche which housed many other Bohemian artists and modernist writers. It was there that she met the Norwegian artist Roald Kristian, who became her first husband.

She rapidly established herself as a flamboyant and unconventional figure. She was bisexual, drank heavily, and had liaisons with many other artists in Bohemian society, often modelling for them as a way of earning a (precarious) living. She established her reputation as ‘The Queen of Bohemia’ by such antics as dancing nude on a cafe table amongst her drinking friends.

Her reputation as a Bohemian and an artist eventually filtered back to London, where she returned to join Roger Fry and his circle working on the application of modernist design principles to fabrics, furniture, clothes, and household objects as part of the Omega Workshops. She acted as a model for the clothes along with Mary Hutchinson, Clive Bell‘s mistress, and she mingled with other members of the Bloomsbury Group, such as Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.

Nina Hamnett in Omega clothes

Nina Hamnett (left) and Winifred Gill (right) in Omega dresses

Her paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Salon d’Automne in Paris. She also taught at the Westminster Technical Institute in London. Around this time she divorced her first husband and lived with the composer and fellow alcoholic E.J. Moeran. They were part of a circle that included the composer Peter Warlock (Philip Heseltine) who who established a very bohemian circle in Eynsford in Kent, along with other composers such as Constant Lambert and William Walton.

During the 1920s (and for the rest of her life) she made the area in central London known as Fitzrovia her home and stamping ground. This new locale for arty-Bohemia was centred on the Fitzroy Tavern in Charlotte Street which she frequented along with fellow Welsh artists Augustus John and Dylan Thomas, making occasional excursions across Oxford Street to the Gargoyle Club in Soho.

After this glittering debut into the glamorous world of modernism and the artistic avant-garde, the remainder of her life was a no less spectacular descent into poverty, squalor, and alcoholism. She lived in a sleazy bed-sit in Howland Street, which was infested with lice and littered with rat-droppings. The flat was furnished only with a broken-down chair, a piece of string for a clothes line, and newspapers instead of proper bedding.

Dolores Courtney

Dolores Courtney by Nina Hamnett

In 1932 she published a volume of memoirs entitled Laughing Torso, which was a best-seller in both the UK and the USA. Following its publication she was sued by Aleister Crowley, whom she had accused of practising black magic. The ensuing trial caused a sensation which helped sales of the book, and Crowley lost his case.

Her success in this instance only fuelled her downward spiral, and she spent the last three decades of her life propping up the bar of the Fitzroy trading anecdotes of her glory years for free drinks. She took little interest in personal hygiene, was incontinent in public, and vomited into her handbag.

Her ending was as spectacular as had been her previous life. Drunk one night she either fell or jumped from the window of her flat and was impaled on the railing spikes below. She lingered miserably in hospital for three more days, where her last words were “Why don’t they let me die?”

Nina Hamnett

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

More on art
More on biography
More on the Bloomsbury Group
Twentieth century literature

Nina Hamnett memoirs

by

the autobiography of ‘the Queen of Bohemia’

Nina Hamnett memoirs is the record of a an artist, a Bohemian, a fringe member of the Bloomsbury Group, and towards the end of her life a woman who was more-or-less professional alcoholic. This is her interim life story, written around two thirds the way through her career when she was forty-two. Don’t expect chronological coherence or a disciplined narrative. She adopts a scatter gun approach, with famous names coming off the page in rapid succession. And she seems to have known (or met) just about everyone who was anyone in the birth of modernist art 1910-1930.

Nina Hamnett MemoirsShe was born in Wales in 1890 into an upper middle-class army family, and was educated at public – that is, private schools. She seems from the outset to have rebelled against the strictures of convention, and her account of her largely unhappy childhood emphasises the tomboy nature of her early years – in a way that reads like a girl’s version of Just William crossed with Adrian Mole. She only encountered the world of art when her father (who she disliked) was posted to Dublin. In her teens she attended a variety of art schools, and very rapidly began to establish contact with the people who were to form an entrée into the world of Bohemia where she felt free to breathe. Arthur Ransome, Hugh Walpole, and Aleister Crowley were early (and slightly dubious) influences.

After inheriting fifty pounds she set herself up in Fitzrovia, and from that point onwards her connections with the artistic world developed at an astonishing pace. Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington, Wyndham Lewis, Jacob Epstein, and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska were all friends by the time she was in her early twenties. They bought each other’s paintings, often shared food, clothing, and shelter – and certainly didn’t stint themselves on whatever drinks were available.

She made a conscious effort to lose her virginity, and ended up doing so in the same rooms in Bloomsbury where Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud had lived in the 1870s. Her life at this stage appears to have been permanently blessed with good fortune. A friend gave her thirty pounds, which paid for a trip to Paris, where she met Modigliani on the first night out. There followed fancy dress parties, all night drinking, and naked dancing. Zadkine, Archipenko, and Kisling flit through the pages, and she eked out her savings by working as an artist’s model – which seems to be almost an excuse for taking her clothes off, which she was given to doing at the end of a night’s drinking.

Suddenly the indulgence of la vie boheme was shattered by the outbreak of war. She limped back home with just twopence to spare for the final tube fair. Yet after what seems like a miraculous escape from danger, she rather perversely returned to Paris to be with the man she loved – who she calls Edgar but whose real name was Roald Kristian. They returned to England, got married, and joined Roger Fry in his Omega Workshops. The subsequent war period is an odd mixture of the first bombing raids on London, Zeppelins bursting into flames, and scrounging drinks in the Cafe Royal. Her husband was arrested as an unregistered alien, spent time in jail, and was then deported to France, from which he never returned.

She moved into Fitzroy Square and befriended Walter Sickert. At this point her class of patrons and admirers seems to go up a notch: she met and painted portraits of the Sitwells, and yet all the time she was tempted to return to Paris, which she felt to be her spiritual home. For a time she took over Sickert’s old position of teaching at Westminster Technical Institute, but as soon as she had been paid at the end of the term and had enough for the fare, she returned to Paris.

There she rejoined her old friend Marie Wassilieff, who had become Leon Trotsky’s mistress during the war. She dined with Brancusi (a good chef) and fell for a romantic Pole who absconded with all her money and her best friend (who was better-looking). Then it was off to the south of France, staying with another Pole and visiting Tsuguharu Foujita, the Japanese artist. There were trips to Collioure, Cerbère, and Port Vendres, an illegal excursion to Port Bou in Spain, picnics, a little painting, and a lot more wine. But strangely enough she felt that the work she produced there was amongst her weakest and she concluded that she and the south of France were not truly compatible.

It’s difficult to tell the exact year or even the rough period in which many of these events take place – but the drinks are recorded with never-ending enthusiasm – including cider laced with Calvados, stout with champagne (at that time known as ‘Turk’s Blood’) and a mixture of absinthe, gentian, and brandy which sent one of her friends into a catatonic spasm and even she admits she could not choke down. Despite the all night parties and the rivers of champagne, the element of bohemianism continues with living in unheated flats where the water freezes in the sink at night.

Nina Hamnett Memoirs

Dolores Courtney by Nina Hamnett

At one point Aleister Crowley introduced a new cocktail containing laudanum, and Hamnett fills in his background, including the practice of Black Magic on a Greek island. For this accusation he sued her in court when the memoirs were published – and lost his case. The resulting scandal sent sales of the book soaring. She met Ford Maddox Ford and Gertrude Stein, then smoked hashish with Cocteau and Raymond Radriguet who opened a new restaurant called Le Boeuf sur le Toit (immortalised by the Darius Milhaud composition).

Parties start off late in the evening, go on from one night club to another, and end up in Les Halles around 8.00 am with breakfast and more drinks. There was another more successful visit to the south of France – St Juan les Pins and Nice which was then becoming fashionable where she sang with Rudolph Valentino (full name Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguolla) who she later introduced to James Joyce. As the memoirs go on, the characters become more and more eccentric – including a lady acrobatic dancer who travelled with two pet monkeys and a snake. Feeling an exhibition coming on, Hamnett returned to London, where her travelling companion managed to set fire to a friend’s flat. The exhibition was a disaster, but she returned to Paris and ended up singing to an audience of Stravinsky and Diaghilev.

The memoir ends with a quite moving account of the funeral of Raymond Radriguet (Cocteau’s lover) who died at only twenty years old, and an idyllic further stay in Grasse in the south of France where she sang songs for fellow guest Francis Poulenc. The account stops abruptly some time around 1926, when she returned from France to take up residence permanently in Fitzrovia, where she became known as the ‘Queen of Bohemia’. There is actually a follow-up volume to these memoirs entitled Is She a Lady? published in 1955, a year before she threw herself out of the window of her flat and was impaled on the area railings below. She lingered painfully in hospital for three days, where her last words were “Why don’t they let me die?”

Nina Hamnett memoirs Buy the book at Amazon UK
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© Roy Johnson 2014

Nina Hamnett, Laughing Torso, London: Virago Press, 1984, ISBN: 860686507

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Nineteenth Century – literary timeline – part 1

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a chronicle of events, literature, and politics

1789. French Revolution

1790. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

1791. Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man

1792. Denmark is first country to abolish slavery. September
massacres in France; royal family imprisoned. Coal gas used for lighting. Mary Wollstencraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

1793. Louis XVI beheaded. France becomes a republic and the National
Anthem La Marseillaise is composed. The Napoleonic Wars begin. Godwin, Political Justice.

1794. First slave revolution led by Toussaint L’Ouverture in Haiti. Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho; William Godwin, Caleb Williams; Robert Burns writes Auld Lang Syne; Blake, Songs of Experience.

1795. First horse-drawn railroad appeared in England. Revolt in Ireland.

1796. British doctor Edmund Jenner performs the first vaccination against smallpox. Fanny Burney, Camilla, Mathew Lewis, The Monk.

1798. Wordsworth and Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads. First draft of Northanger Abbey written. T.R. Malthus, Essay on Population

1800. Parliamentary union of Great Britain and Ireland.

1801. Walter Scott, Ballads.

1802. Formation of the Society for the Suppression of Vice in response to concern over obscene literature and pictures – it conducts several prosecutions under the Obscene Libel Law. Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads.

1803. Insurrection in Ireland. Britain at war with France. General Enclosures Act permits enclosure of common land. Thomas Chatterton, Works (posthumous).

1804. Napoleon declares himself Emperor. Spain declares war against Great Britain. Blake, Milton and Jerusalem.

1805. Battle of Trafalgar – Nelson’s victory and death. Walter Scott, Lay of the Last Minstrel.

1807. Slave trade abolished in British Empire. Occupation of Portugal by the French.

1808. Occupation of Spain by the French. Goethe, Faust – Part I.

1809. London exhibition of paintings by William Blake.

1810. Scott, The Lady of the Lake.

1811. George III is declared insane and The Prince of Wales becomes regent. ‘Luddite’ disturbances in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. Jane Austen publishes first novel, Sense and Sensibility.

1812. Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow.

1813. Austen, Pride and Prejudice. Shelly, Queen Mab.

1814. Stephenson’s steam locomotive. Copyright Act extended the period of copyright to 28 years from date of first publication or the length of the author’s life. Scott’s Waverley begins his career as Europe’s most celebrated novelist [largely unread today]. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

1815. Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon is defeated. Corn Law passed setting price of corn at 80s per quarter.

1816. Jane Austen, Emma; Coleridge, Kubla Khan; Scott, The Antiquary.

1817. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine founded; Coleridge, Biographia Literaria. Keats, Poems.

1818. Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey; Persuasion (published posthumously); Mary Shelly, Frankenstein; Scott, Rob Roy. Keats, Endymion.

1819. Peterloo massacre. Seditious Publications Act (copy tax on periodicals containing news). Savannah is the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; Byron, Don Juan.

1820. George IV becomes king. Shelley, Prometheus Unbound.

1821. Mechanics Institutes formed in Glasgow and London. Death of John Keats. Shelley, Defence of Poetry, Thomas DeQuincey, Confessions of an Opium Eater.

1822. Famine in Ireland. Shelly drowns in Italy. Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia.

1823. Charles Macintosh develops a new fabric for making raincoats. William Webb Ellis, a boy at Rugby school, unwittingly starts the development of the game that was to become known as ‘rugby’.

1824. The National Gallery is opened; G. Combe, Elements of Frenology. Death of Byron.

1825. Stockton-Darlington railway opened; Trade Unions are legalized.

1827. University College London founded. Constable paints The Cornfield.

1828. The Duke of Wellington becomes Prime Minister.

1829. The Governesses’ Mutual Society is founded in response to public concern over the situation of unemployed governesses. Catholic Emancipation Bill sponsored by Sir Robert Peel is passed – Roman Catholics in the UK are relieved of the oppressive regulations, some of which had been in force since the time of Henry VIII. Catholics now able to sit as Members of Parliament. Invention of the first steam locomotive. Founding of the Metropolitan Police Force. Thomas Carlyle, Signs of the Times.

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Nineteenth Century – literary timeline – part 2

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a chronicle of events, literature, and politics

1830. Death of George IV; William IV becomes King. Petitions to both Houses of Parliament on the abolition of slavery. William Huskisson, a former cabinet minister, is killed at the opening of the Liverpool – Manchester railway. Tennyson, Poems Chiefly Lyrical.

1831. Unsuccessful introduction of the Reform Bills. Darwin’s voyage on The Beagle.

1832. The First Reform Act extends the franchise to those owning property rated at 10 a year or more.

1833. Shaftesbury’s Factory Act limits hours of children’s employment. Slavery abolished in the British Empire. Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus.

1834. First colony established in South Australia. Tolpuddle martyrs exiled there. Emancipation of British West Indian slaves declared – though it takes four years for this declaration to be fulfilled. New Poor Law Commission establishes workhouses. Fire breaks out in the Palace of Westminster – much of the Houses of Parliament destroyed.

1835. Municipal Corporation Act gives votes for local government to men only.

1836. Balzac begins La Comedie Humaine novel cycle. Pickwick Papers launches Dickens’s career. London University is formed. Newspaper tax reduced.

1837. Fox Talbot experiments with photographic prints. Queen Victoria ascends the throne. Dickens, Oliver Twist. Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution.

1838. Chartist petitions published. Full emancipation of British West Indian slaves. The London to Birmingham railway is opened.

1839. Custody of Infants Act. (For the first time a woman living apart from her husband was able to apply for custody of children under seven.) Chartist riots. Daguerre patents photographic technique. Shelley, Poetical Works (posthumous)

1840. Beginning of a decade of considerable social and economic turbulence in England. Marriage of Victoria and Albert. Penny post established in UK. Start of a decade which saw a rise in so-called ‘condition of England novels’. Opium War – Chinese ports are besieged to force free passage of English narcotics. Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby.

1841. Governesses’ Benevolent Institute founded (see also 1829). Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop. Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes and Hero-Worship.

1842. Mines Act forbids use of children and women in mines. New Chartist riots. Copyright Act extends the life of copyright to 42 years from publication or 7 years after the author’s death. Mudie establishes the circulating library. Browning, Dramatic Lyrics; Tennyson, Poems.

1843. Colonization of Africa includes Gambia, Natal, Basutoland. Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit. Sara Ellis, The Wives of England: Their relative duties, domestic influence and social obligations. Ruskin, Modern Painters; Dickens, A Christmas Carol. Wordsworth appointed Poet
Laureate.

1844. Factory Act restricts working hours for women and children. First telegraph line, between Paddington and Slough. Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England. Royal Commission of Health in Towns. Co-Operative movement begun in Rochdale.

1845. Potato famine in Ireland. Boom in railway building speculation. Bronte sisters invest. Disraeli, Sybil, E.A. Poe, Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Franklin’s expedition to the Arctic to find ‘north west passage’.

1846. Repeal of the Corn Laws (legislation designed to protect the price of domestic grain from foreign imports). Famine in Ireland. Introduction of the ‘Marriage with a Deceased Wife’s Sister Bill’ (this is finally passed in 1907). C. Bronte, The Professor; George Eliot translates Strauss’s Life of Jesus; Ruskin, Modern Painters II.

1847. The first use of chloroform as an anaesthetic. Ten Hours Factory Act. Bronte sisters publish Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey in same year. Tennyson, The Princess. Thackery, Vanity Fair.

1848. Revolutions throughout Europe. Queen’s College for Women founded in London. Discovery of nuggets in California starts ‘The Gold Rush’. Introduction of a Public Health Act to try to tackle cholera. A. Bronte, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton; Dickens, Dombey and Son; Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto; Kingsley, Yeast. Dante Gabrielle Rosetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais form the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

1849. Bedford College for Women founded. Dickens, David Copperfield; C. Bronte, Shirley

1850. Pope Pius IX restores the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the UK – for the first time since the 16th century Catholics have a full hierarchy consistent with Catholic countries. The Public Libraries Act – first of a series of acts enabling local councils to provide free public libraries. Parliament imposes a sixty hour week. Death of Wordsworth. Tennyson becomes Poet Laureate; In Memoriam. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese, Wordsworth, The Prelude, Dickens begins publishing Household Words. Thackeray, Pendennis.

1851. Great Exhibition in Hyde Park. Religious Census. Mrs Gaskell, Cranford, Harriet Taylor Mill, The Enfranchisement of Women. Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach. Ruskin, The Stones of Venice. Mayhew London Labour and the London Poor

1852. Dickens, Bleak House. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Florence Nightingale, Cassandra. New Houses of Parliament open. First free public library opens in Manchester.

1853. Trollope, The Warden. C. Bronte, Villette

1854. Britain and France declare war against Russia to begin Crimean war. Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. The British Medical Association is founded. Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception promulgated. Dickens, Hard Times, Gaskell, North and South. Coventry Patmore begins The Angel in the House (sequence of poems about female domestic responsibility).

1855. Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit. Repeal of stamp duty on newspapers; death of Charlotte Bronte. Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South; Robert Browning, Men and Women; Tennyson, Maud and Other Poems. Livingstone ‘discovers’ the Victoria Falls.

1856. Ruskin, On the Pathetic Fallacy; William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine.

1857. Indian ‘Mutiny’. Matrimonial Causes Act facilitates divorce for those who can afford it. The Obscene Publications Act is passed. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh. Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Bronte; Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays; Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers; Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary.

1858. ‘Big Ben’ is installed in the Houses of Parliament clock tower. India ‘transferred’ to the British Crown. Abolition of property qualification for MPs, enabling working-class men to stand.

1859. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species; Eliot, Adam Bede; Samuel Smiles, Self-Help; J. S. Mill, On Liberty; George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel; Tennyson, Idylls of the King. Samuel Smiles Self-Help. Mrs Beeton Book of Household Management

1860. Lenoir invents the first practical internal combustion engine.
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss; Wilkie Collins, The Woman In White; Ruskin, Unto this Last

1861. American civil war begins with eleven states breaking away to form southern confederacy. Emancipation of serfs in Russia. Italy united under King Victor Emmanuel. In England, daily weather forecasts begin. First horse-drawn trams are used in London. George Eliot, Silas Marner; Mrs Beeton, The Book of Household Management; Hans Christian Andersen, Fairytales

1862. George Eliot, Romola; George Meredith, Modern Love; Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

1863. Polish rising against Russian occupation. American Civil War – to 1865. Opening of the first underground railway in London. George Elder Hicks’ triptych of paintings entitled Women’s Mission are exhibited at the Royal Academy. Charles Kingsley The Water Babies

1864. Contagious Diseases Act. Formation in London of the International Working Men’s Movement (influenced by Marx); Matthew Arnold, ‘The Function of Criticism at the Present Time’

1865. Slavery abolished in United States. Assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Lister develops antiseptic surgery. Cholera epidemic kills over 14,000. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace; Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies. Lewis Carrol Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

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