This Week's (Slightly Cranky) Acquisitions
(I'm slightly cranky because one of my extremely expensive bifocal contact lenses cracked across the middle, there's no warranty after the first blasted month, and until I can get a new one, I have to wear an older lens that works at distances but not close up. Nor can I just go do another checkup for a new prescription, as my insurance won't help to pay for the lenses until December. I'm displeased.)
- Countess E. M. de Bodenham, Mrs. Herbert and the Villagers; or, Familiar Conversations on the Principal Duties of Christianity, 2 vols. in 1 (Dolman, 1878). 10th ed. of this rather lengthy series of dialogues on Catholicism with no immediately obvious plot. Nevertheless, relatively popular at the time. First published in 1824. (John Bevan)
- Gerald Griffin, The Collegians (Atlantic, 2008). Reprint of Griffin's 1829 bestseller, a thriller loosely based on the murder of teenager Ellen Hanley by her lover, John Scanlan, and his servant. For more about Griffin (who mostly abandoned fiction in 1838 to join the Christian Brothers), see here. (Amazon)
- Robert Edric, Sanctuary (Black Swan, 2015). Historical novel about Branwell Bronte who is, as one generally assumes, unhappy. (Amazon UK)
- George Hagen, Tom Bedlam (Random House, 2007). Poor boy in Victorian England kicks around a bit, travels the world, finally grows up. Shades of Oliver Twist. (eBay)
- Valentine Cunningham, Everywhere Spoken Against: Dissent in the Victorian Novel (OUP, 1975). Important study of how Dissenters were represented by major Victorian novelists like Eliot. (eBay)
- Richard Hughes Gibson, Forgiveness in Victorian Literature: Grammar, Narrative, and Community (Bloomsbury, 2015). Analyzes multiple meanings and practices of forgiveness in Dickens, Eliot, Trollope, Hardy, and Wilde. (Amazon [secondhand])
- Frederick Burwick, British Drama of the Industrial Revolution (CUP, 2015). History of theatre specifically for working-class audiences from the Revolutionary until the early Victorian period. I'm reviewing this for Choice. (Review copy)
- Lilian Lewis Shipman, Crusade against Drink in Victorian England (Palgrave, 1988). History of temperance movements. (Amazon [secondhand])