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Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Natalie's List

This is an incomplete list: I have listed authors I plan to read. I will think about which specific works I'd like to add to the list.

Of course, I am all about Buckingham Palace!

1. Conrad,
Heart of Darkness. This novella was first published in a journal in 1899 so it counts as Victorian. I am almost done with it right now. I know it's very controversial. Was Conrad a rascist? Was he trying to expose the evils of imperialism? Was he deeply ironic? I take the view that Conrad is ironic and that the "heart of darness" is that place within each of us that could easily become brutish and evil.

2. Charles Dickens.

3. Mrs. Gaskell.

4. Willkie Collins

5. Edmund Gosse

6. George Eliot

7. Trollope

I'm going to read Madame Bovary for my Book Club in a couple of months but I don't know if we are limited to British authors (note to self: find out!). Possible reads: Distaeli, Braddon, Gissing, and poetry.

4 comments:

Jayme

I have to read both Eliot and Gaskell for my British Women Novelists class~!

Unknown

That Conrad book sounded interesting to me and I checked Project Gutenberg to see if they had it and they do. I am putting it on my list.

Judy/Intergalatic Bookworm

JD

I take the view that Conrad was as ironic as his narrator Marlow, and he's no more a racist in this book than Mark Twain was in "Huckleberry Finn".

If you want to hear a good unabridged reading of "Heart of Darkness" download Toby Stephens' from http://www.silksoundbooks.com/ To me, he gets Marlow.

sunt_lacrimae_rerum

Thank you all for your comments. I'll be looking for the audiobook by that reader. Silksound really does have some fantastic readers and I've used them before.

Natalie

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