Trollope and a bookish meander

I’m busy clicking my way through The Duke’s Children on my Kindle. I’ve reached 63% so it shouldn’t take too much longer now. I must admit that I haven’t been enjoying this one quite as much as the others in Trollope’s Palliser series. The younger members of the family are getting into trouble one way or another and Planty/the Duke of Omnium is trying to get his only daughter safely married off but is finding the whole procedure distasteful. I haven’t found much in the way of humour in this one, so far anyway. I do like Trollope’s foray into a lighter tone, and he isn’t averse to poking fun at himself when he mentions in one of the previous books that the job of Postmaster General is such a lowly and insignificant one, or words to that effect. Of course it was exactly the job which Trollope himself had and all I can say is that he must have had an awful lot of free time as he was able to write so many chunksters.

Anyway, more on the book when I actually get to the end of it.

I found myself in Broughton, Edinburgh again a couple of weekends ago but this time I only bought two books. I had actually intended buying a lovely old copy of Our Village by Mary Russell Mitford, I couldn’t make up my mind about it on my first visit and as always happens – I got home and wished I had just bought it. Of course by the time I got back to the shop it was gone! I’ve had a look on Project Gutenberg since and I think I’ll just download it. Has anyone read it. I don’t think it’s written by anyone connected to the Mitford sisters, but you might know better than I.

The Fathers cover

I ended up buying Mary Anne by Daphne du Maurier and a book called The Fathers by Allen Tate, first published in 1938. It’s just a paperback – Penguin Modern Classic but it was the cover which attracted me.

It’s a detail from ‘The Plantation’, circa 1825, by an unknown American artist which is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. I like old naive paintings, I think it would make a lovely embroidery/textile design.

I’d never heard of the book but presumably it’s well known as it’s a Penguin classic. It seems to have an American Civil War setting, has anyone out there read it? I’m hoping to get around to reading it soon.

6 thoughts on “Trollope and a bookish meander

  1. I’ve never heard of the Allen Tate, but the Civil War setting piques my curiosity.

    I also left a copy of Our Village on a shelf, and regretted it! I do have a copy on my nook now. I think this is the Mitford who described Jane Austen as a husband-hunting butterfly – but maybe it was her mother?

    • Lisa,
      Believe it or not the Civil War setting interests me too. I watched a film on the American Civil War by Ken Burns a few years ago, in fact I’ve got the DVD. I really liked Shelby Foote.

      Our bookish lives are so similar! If I enjoy reading Our Village ebook I might still buy the actual book when I next fall over a copy of it as there are some lovely illustrated ones. I can’t help thinking that it’s just as well that Jane Austen didn’t find a husband as she would probably have died even earlier. So many of her friends seem to have died in childbirth!

  2. I’ve never heard of either the Tate or the Mitford, but they both sound very interesting. I love the cover of the Tate – it is very striking.
    I used to like reading about the Civil War, but I think I overdosed back in my 20’s and now I rarely read anything set during that time period!

    • Anbolyn,
      I haven’t read any American Civil War fiction yet, not even Gone With The Wind. That was my m-i-l’s comfort book, so I’m just not going there! I wonder if you could recommend another book to me?

      • Not Anbolyn, but always interested in Civil War books đŸ™‚ There is Gore Vidal’s Lincoln – or if you like your historical fiction a bit racy, there is John Jakes’ North & South. Geraldine Brooks’ March is about the father in the Little Women family and his experiences in the South before the war, and then as a chaplain. The Killer Angels is about the Battle of Gettysburg – so more military.

        • Lisa,
          I read all of Gore Vidal’s histories years ago so I have read Lincoln but I want to read them all again soon. Thanks for the info – I haven’t heard of any of them but I’ll try to track them down. I’m quite into the military aspect of it all now, it was Jack who was originally interested in the subject and I sort of caught the bug.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *