Back to the Classics Challenge 2021 – the wrap-up.

I’ve completed six books in the Back to the Classics Challenge 2021 which is hosted by Karen at Books and Chocolate.

1. A 19th century classic: any book first published from 1800 to 1899. The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope. This one is a cracker, a real page-turner.

3. A classic by a woman – The Corn King and the Spring Queen by Naomi Mitchison. I felt this one dragged, it is very long and wasn’t really a page-turner for me.

5. A classic by a BIPOC author; that is, a non-white author. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin. I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I thought I would, but I will try more by the author.

5. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. This one is a heart-breaking read, but I’m glad I read it.

7. New-to-you classic by a favorite author — a new book by an author whose works you have already read. A Maid in Waiting by John Galsworthy This seventh book in the Forsyte Chronicles was good, just two more books to go.

9. A children’s classic – Pinocchio by Carlo/Charles Collodi. I’m glad I caught up with this children’s classic at last.

Thank you Karen for hosting this challenge.

Pinocchio by Carlo/ Charles Collodi

<img src= Pinocchio Cover

Pinocchio by Charles Collodi is the children’s classic that I chose for my Back to the Classics Challenge 2021 list. I’ve been meaning to read it for years, but I must admit that I had no idea that Pinocchio was written so long ago. It was in 1880 that Collodi started writing The Adventures of Pinocchio, the stories were published weekly in a children’s magazine. The Disney film was made in 1940.

This was an enjoyable read with Pinocchio getting into all sorts of scrapes because he was being naughty, despite promising to be good. He’s always very sorry and sees the error of his ways, but he really just can’t help himself.

Each chapter is a warning to the young readers not to do what Pinocchio does. He runs away from Geppetto his ‘father’. He’s easily duped out of his money by a couple of con-men in the shape of a cat and a fox. He ends up being hung up from a tree, but rescued by a blue-haired fairy via a crow. There is a talking cricket but it doesn’t feature in the way that Jiminy Cricket in the film does.

The author managed to write stories with morals and warnings, about the best way children should behave to avoid trouble and upsetting other people, but without being preachy or prissy and with plenty of fun. It’s illustrated in line and colour by A.H. Watson, although there’s only one colour illustration.

My copy of the book dates from 1945 and has a foreword by Compton Mackenzie. It is DEDICATED TO THE BOYS AND GIRLS OF EVERY COLOUR, AGE, AND COUNTRY.

Pinocchio End Papers

I really like the endpapers, but as you can see a bookshop has added a sticker to the front ones.
Boans Book Salon, 1st FLOOR, MURRAY ST. END PERTH WA

The word PERTH jumped out at me and I thought, it hasn’t travelled far in its 76 years, then I realised it was Perth in Australia.

The Masterpiece by Emile Zola

The Masterpiece by Emile Zola was first published in 1886. My copy was translated by Thomas Walton in 1950 and I must say that I doubt if anyone else could have done a better job. It’s the fouteenth novel in Zola’s Rougon Macquart series, and it’s a great read. I read this one for Back to the Classics Challenge and The Classics Club.

The Masterpiece is Zola’s most autobiographical novel, he based the main characters – a group of artistic friends on some of his own friends and himself. The artist Cezanne was his friend and there must have been plenty of artistic discussions between the two over the years, so Zola would have had plenty of copy to choose from I’m sure. The character Sandoz is based on Zola.

The main character Claude is a serious young artist, his friends think he has great talent and it’s only a matter of time before he becomes his generation’s Delacroix with his art being hung in The Salon and winning prizes. Claude is developing a new style called ‘Open Air’ (Impressionist). However he makes life difficult for himself, painting on enormous canvases and never being happy with his work, never knowing when to stop. His ideas which start off well somehow always go awry and when he does manage to get a painting accepted by The Salon it’s only in the gallery of the ‘refused’ artworks, where everyone laughs at his efforts. However some years later one of his friend’s steals that composition and changes it slightly and the resulting painting and the artist are lauded.

Zola concentrates on Claude’s story and his wife Christine, but his friends are a sculptor, journalist, architect and of course a novelist, and their lives and how they interact with Claude are also a big part of the book.

Germinal has always been my favourite in this series but this one ran it a close thing, although I must warn anyone thinking of reading it – especially in these angst-ridden pandemic times – that it vies with Thomas Hardy for shock and darkness. However there are some lovely descriptions of Paris, especially at night, Claude was in love with the city.

There’s an introduction by the translator Thomas Walton, obviously not to be read until you’ve finished reading the book, but as it happens the one passage that I had marked to quote is in his introduction.

Sandoz (Zola) is speaking to Claude:

“Has it ever struck you that posterity may not be the fair, impartial judge we like to think it is? We console ourselves for being spurned and rejected by relying on getting a fair deal from the future, just as the faithful put up with with the abomination on this earth because they firmly believe in another life where everyone shall have his deserts. Suppose the artist’s paradise turned out to be as non-existent as the Catholic’s, and future generations proved just as misguided as the present one and persisted in liking pretty-pretty dabbling better than honest to goodness painting! …. What a sell for us all, to have lived like slaves, noses to the grindstone all to no purpose!”

Such is life!

I bought my copy of this book in a charity shop in North Berwick one hot summer’s day a few years ago in the glory days of travel. I can’t say that I like the cover though. It’s an Ann Arbor paperback, The University of Michigan Press, and I bought about five other Zola books along with it, all similarly very far from home.

Dolly Dialogues by Anthony Hope

Dolly Dialogues cover

I decided to read Dolly Dialogues by Anthony Hope for the comic novel category in Back to the Classics Challenge 2019 which is hosted by Karen of Books and Chocolate.

This slim book has 144 pages consisting of 20 short chapters which were originally published separately in the Westminster Gazette. The book was first published in 1994 and it is really quite funny with some laugh out loud bits.

Dolly is a young flibbertigibbet who soon changes from Miss Dolly Foster by becoming the wife of Lord Mickleham who is wealthy but rather boring. Her husband’s mother and sisters disapprove of his choice of wife, not that that bothers Dolly.

Dolly has had lots of romances with various young men and Sam Carter is one of them and her marriage doesn’t hold her back from having him as a close friend and according to her mother-in-law – indulging in ‘romping’ with him. This is a fun comedy of Victorian manners.