Old, and in print, but...

KeskusteluGeeks who love the Classics

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Old, and in print, but...

Tämä viestiketju on "uinuva" —viimeisin viesti on vanhempi kuin 90 päivää. Ryhmä "virkoaa", kun lähetät vastauksen.

1lyzard
lokakuu 2, 2010, 2:52 am

We had an earlier thread for people who wanted to dispute that a classic was a classic - this one is for books that are old, and in print (or at least available electronically), but definitely not a classic.

I'm currently reading The Isle Of Pines by Henry Neville, about a lost English colony on an island, which seems accepted as an influence on Defoe. It's interesting (and rather dirty! :) ) but I certainly wouldn't call it a classic.

Anyone else reading, or interested in, something that only scores two out of three?

2lyzard
lokakuu 9, 2010, 4:52 pm

Fine! I'll start my own thread! With blackjack! And hookers! :)

Anyway...on the remote chance that anyone is interested, The Isle Of Pines has been read and blogged:

http://acourseofsteadyreading.wordpress.com/2010/10/05/the-isle-of-pines-part-1/

3SusieBookworm
lokakuu 10, 2010, 12:55 pm

I like reading the "non-classics" - I noticed that you share The Demon of Sicily and The Mummy! A Tale with me, two non-classics that are pretty good.

4lyzard
lokakuu 10, 2010, 5:37 pm

I hope you'll share any thoughts on your non-classics here. I'd be very glad of the company. :)

Thanks for the recommendations - those two sounded interesting, so I wish-listed them, but I haven't read either.

5cbfiske
lokakuu 12, 2010, 12:03 pm

I've got one on my TBR list that I think fits this category. I was visiting Sunnyside, Washington Irving's home and picked up an abridged copy of The Life of George Washington by Washington Irving. He's definitely known as an author of classics, but I don't think this book is seen as one of them. I'll let you know my thoughts when I start reading.

6rocketjk
lokakuu 12, 2010, 5:13 pm

I just finished The Leopard's Spots by Thomas Dixon, which I believe fits this category. Written in 1902, it is the first of Dixon's "The Clansman" trilogy about the Reconstruction Era in the South. Negroes are bad. Very bad. Very, very, very bad. What is a hard-pressed Anglo-Saxon civilization to do but start a secret society called the Ku Klux Klan in order to defend their race and privilege from the barbarian hordes?

In other words, ugh. But interesting from an historical standpoint. But, really, yechh. Ptui. I most likely won't be reading the 2nd or 3rd parts of the trilogy.

7lyzard
lokakuu 12, 2010, 5:36 pm

>5 cbfiske: Excellent! I look forward to it.

>6 rocketjk: Oh, that's a great example. I didn't realise that The Clansman was part of a trilogy. I put all of Thomas Dixon's novels in my TBR list with a kind of creeped-out fascination - I find their mindset so alien, the books are almost science fiction to me.

I have a film book at home somewhere that ties together The Birth Of A Nation with Triumph Of The Will, describing them as "as artistically imperative as they are morally abhorrent".

8lyzard
lokakuu 19, 2010, 5:37 pm

Now reading the recently rediscovered and reissued 1796 novel Agatha; or, A Narrative Of Recent Events, which turns out to be a terribly English / Protestant view of Catholicism and the French Revolution. Certainly not a classic, but very interesting. Currently blogging about it, starting here:

http://acourseofsteadyreading.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/agatha-or-a-narrative-of-...

9SusieBookworm
lokakuu 20, 2010, 11:41 am

That looks interesting. I love 18th-century literature - the more obscure the better.

10lyzard
lokakuu 20, 2010, 5:35 pm

>> I love 18th-century literature - the more obscure the better.

Exactly my feeling, SusieB.! :)

If you can find it, Agatha is an interesting read - not quite anything else I've come across from this period. I hope to finish blogging about it this weekend.

11henkl
lokakuu 21, 2010, 8:22 am

I'm intrigued by the fact that there must be a Dutch translation (probably contemporaneous?). I couldn't find it in the catalogue of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the Dutch national library, nor in a few university libraries I searched.

12lyzard
lokakuu 21, 2010, 3:38 pm

I'm relying on the information suppled by the book's editor, John Goss. He says that there was a Dutch edition in 1802, based upon the text of the French edition. It was published as Agatha, of de Engelsche non: eene hedenaagsche Fransche klooster-geschiedenis.

(Any spelling mistakes in that are certainly mine. :) )

Given the content of the novel, I'm personally very curious to know what the French made of it, and if they changed it much in their version.

13lyzard
lokakuu 26, 2010, 5:47 pm

A non-classic that makes me want to read a classic! :)

Richard Head's pamphlet, The Floating Island, is a satire on the debtors' laws of late 17th-century England. Parts are amusing, parts make you roll your eyes, and parts are completely inscrutable. The pamphlet is chiefly famous these days as the source of a very minor character in The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

And blogged:

http://acourseofsteadyreading.wordpress.com/2010/10/27/the-floating-island/

14slickdpdx
lokakuu 26, 2010, 6:42 pm

Strange that Jules Verne would write a book, same title, about a bunch of rich men.

15lyzard
lokakuu 26, 2010, 8:05 pm

Yes, same piece of symbolism, but put to a completely opposite use.

16lyzard
marraskuu 3, 2010, 5:42 pm

And the non-classics just keep on coming! The Western Wonder, another of Richard Head's pamphlets, this one containing a spurious account of a journey to the mythical Irish island of Hy Brasil:

http://acourseofsteadyreading.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/the-western-wonder-or-o-b...

17lyzard
marraskuu 6, 2010, 5:12 pm

Philip And Philippa: A Genealogical Romance Of To-Day (1901) is the only novel written by the noted genealogist John Osborne Austin. Unabashedly sentimental, it tells the story of the last representatives of the two branches of an old family, and the possibility of their union. The story moves literally all around the world, which gives an interesting glimpse into the means and directions of travel at the time; but as it reminds us sternly from time to time, it's a love story, not a travelogue, so don't expect too much "local colour":

http://acourseofsteadyreading.wordpress.com/2010/11/06/philip-and-philippa-a-gen...

18lyzard
Muokkaaja: marraskuu 17, 2010, 5:22 pm

First, we're back to 1675 for Richard Head's sequel to The Western Wonder. In O-Brazile, Head takes his hoaxing one step further with an account of the breaking of the spell that lay upon the mysterious Irish island:

http://acourseofsteadyreading.wordpress.com/2010/11/13/o-brazile-or-the-inchante...

Then, slingshotting a couple of centuries into the future, we have The Eternal Woman by Dorothea Gerard from 1903, a distinctly anti-feminist consideration of "woman's true destiny". (And if you think it might have something to do with a wedding ring, give yourself a gold star):

http://acourseofsteadyreading.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/the-eternal-woman/

19lyzard
marraskuu 29, 2010, 4:45 pm

And its back to the Restoration, for two romans a clef that take opposing views of the politics of the day. The first, The Perplex'd Prince, supports the reality of the so-called Popish Plot, and accuses the future James II, then the Duke of York, of trying to murder his brother, Charles II, in order to secure the throne and re-establish Catholicism in England:

http://acourseofsteadyreading.wordpress.com/2010/11/20/the-perplexd-prince/

And in the opposite corner, The Fugitive Statesman, which takes the Royalist position and accuses those who tried to exclude James from the succession of being blasphemers, traitors and anarchists. This pamphlet is interesting chiefly for stealing its character names and its approach from John Dryden's Absalom And Achitopel:

http://acourseofsteadyreading.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/the-fugitive-statesman-in...

20rocketjk
tammikuu 15, 2011, 2:01 am

I have another for this list, Haunch, Paunch and Jowl by Samuel Ornitz. Written in 1923, this is a novel of the Jewish Lower East Side of NYC in the early days of the 20th century. Ornitz soon moved from novel writing to script writing and leftist organizing. He was eventually blacklisted in the McCarthy days. A first person narrative of the streets, the book was originally published without an author's name as "An Anonymous Autobiography," although in fact it's fiction. (Is it just me, or does the phrase, "In fact it's fiction" sound like a Groucho Marx line?)

21SusieBookworm
tammikuu 27, 2011, 4:25 pm

I just finished Henrietta Sees It Through, a collection of fictional letters about WWII first published during the war.

My review:
http://susie-bookworm.blogspot.com/

I'm also reading The Captain's Bride and The Deserter's Daughter, which are two Civil War novellas.

22jjmiller50fiction
syyskuu 25, 2011, 8:55 am

I'm not sure these qualify: they're definitely not new, they're readily available electronically, but you'd have to strain hard to call them 'classic': Works of Sax Rohmer, as "The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu".

23riani1
syyskuu 26, 2011, 12:23 pm

I found an ebook entitled Men, Women and Guns by H.C. McNeile. I thought it was going to be a novel, but it's a series of short stories set during World War I, both at home in England and at the front. The introduction is dazzling, a description of a short walk through a bombed-out zone just outside of a village were the narrator is bivouacked. The matter-of-fact terror is amazing.