Literature – Page 2 – Elizabeth Hawksley

The Strand Magazine: child acrobats and stage dancers

The Strand Magazine (1891-1950) was one of the most popular magazines of the late Victorian Age; it came out monthly and I have my Great-Grandfather’s copy of the first hardback edition of The Strand Magazine, Jan-June, 1891. It contained short stories, some translated from foreign languages; e.g. Russian (A. Pushkin); and French (Victor Hugo), together with articles of general interest. It was fully illustrated and targeted a middle-brow, middle-class readership; with something for everyone. The list of authors who wrote for The Strand Magazine was impressive and included Agatha Christie, Rudyard Kipling, and P. G Wodehouse. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories were serialized in The Strand Magazine, where Sidney Paget’s illustrations defined what Holmes looked like so perfectly that it’s now impossible to visualize him any other way. The magazine was phenomenally successful and, until the Second World War, it regularly sold 500,000 copies a month.

Strand Magazine bound copy January-June 1891

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Dame Trot and her Comical Cats

About ten years ago, I bought a tattered old copy of a 19^th century children’s book, 13 by 17 cms, called Dame Trot and her Comical Cats published in 1850 by Dean & Co of Threadneedle Street, London. It was a best seller and I thought it might be interesting to look into its history. Its story is a complicated – and convoluted – one.

The front cover picture shows an artist cat painting the portrait of the famous Dame Trot which stands on the easel

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Leigh Hunt: poet, essayist and critic (1784-1859)

James Henry Leigh Hunt, to give Hunt his full name, was one of those people who everyone who was anyone in either politics or the arts knew, or at least knew of. In 1808, aged only 24, he, together with his older brother John, set up The Examiner, a weekly political paper which prided itself on its political independence; it was liberal and reformist in its opinions and it attacked, ferociously, whatever Hunt felt deserved it.

Leigh Hunt by Benjamin Haydon, courtesy of National Portrait Gallery

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Writing Tips: my First Novel and the Hermione Factor

This week, I’m stepping back in time – a long way: to 1980 in fact, when I sold my first Rachel Summerson novel, Hearts are Trumps, to Sidgwick & Jackson. The following year, it came out in America, published by St Martin’s Press who renamed it Belgrave Square: A Novel of Society.

Me lecturing at Caerleon Writers’ Holiday, something I enjoy doing.

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Jane Austen: Part II, Margaret Dashwood and ‘Sense & Sensability’

In 2013, Joanna Trollope published Sense & Sensibility, one of the Austen Project books which aimed to re-write Jane Austen’s novels, scene by scene, but in a modern setting. I have only just read it, and I can’t understand how I came to miss it – perhaps because 2013 wasn’t a good year for me. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and she has an interesting take on Margaret Dashwood.

*Jane Austen after Cassandra Austen, stipple engraving, published 1870, National Portrait Gallery*

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Jane Austen: Part I, Margaret Dashwood and ‘Sense & Sensibility

This post is in two parts. This week I shall look at the role of Margaret Dashwood, firstly, in Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility and then I’ll contrast it with Emma Thompson’s depiction of Margaret Dashwood in her Screenplay of Sense & Sensibility which won the 1996 Academy Award for Best Screenplay, as well as earning Emma Thompson an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The differences are interesting.

19th century glass inkwell

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Elizabeth Hawksley: e-books to go

Lockdown does strange things. I’d been thinking for a long time about getting my back list of 10 novels into e-books but, somehow, it’s remained at the thinking stage. Should I edit and re-write my early novels – I could see where they needed work – or I should operate on the ‘sod it’ principle and, after altering any spelling mistakes or obvious errors, publish them as they originally were. I’d begin with my first Elizabeth Hawksley: Lysander’s Lady, and put them into e-books sequentially, ending with my most recent novel, Highland Summer.

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Arthur Mee’s ‘1000 Beautiful Things’

Arthur Mee (1875-1943) was one of the most successful children’s non-fiction writers of the first four decades of the 20^th century. His name is now almost forgotten but, in his time, I think it is fair to say that everybody knew him. He was the literary editor of Alfred Harmsworth’s Daily Mail from 1903 until his death in 1943 and he collaborated with Harmsworth on a number of publications like The Self-Educator (1905-7), and The History of the World (1907-9). Perhaps his greatest talent was his ability to organize a huge and diverse amount of general knowledge and disseminate it to the general public (in particular, children) in ways which stimulated their imaginations and kept them coming back for more.

Arthur Mee at his desk with ‘The Children’s Newspaper’, courtesy of Wikipedia

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Must it be ‘Happy Birthday’?

Singing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice after washing one’s hands, even sung silently, must be one of the most uninspiring Government directives ever given. OK, I can understand why they chose it – everyone knows it and it offends nobody, but all the same, you must admit that it’s dull.

A Tudor kitchen

I was thinking of this, when a sentence in a Tudor recipe sudden;y popped into my head: ‘Stir for as long as it takes to say a paternoster.’ Pater noster is Our Father in Latin and it means, of course, The Lord’s Prayer. How long does it take to say, I wondered, so I took off my watch and timed it. Continue reading Must it be ‘Happy Birthday’?

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Jane Austen: Mr Darcy, may I introduce…?

My late 19^th century copy of Manners and Rules of Good Society by ‘A Member of the Aristocracy’ deals with everything a novelist or reader could possibly want to know about how Society operated and, as far as I can tell, the same rules applied in the Regency period. This week, I want to look at the knotty question of how one introduces somebody to someone else with regard to Jane Austen’s novels, or, indeed, any Historical novel set before the First World War.

‘Manners and Rules of Good Society’ by a Member of the Aristocracy. My copy is an 18th edition which dates from 1892

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