Tag Archives: Dinah Craik

Reading Cornwall: Past, Present and Future

December 23, 2010 By in Challenges, Reading Cornwall Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Twelve months ago I set off on operation “Read Cornwall”, because there were so many wonderful books from and about my own particular corner of the world that I wanted to read and celebrate.

I set myself a target of twelve books a year, and I am pleased to say that I have done it and that I loved it.

I knew that I would, but I had to set the target so that I wouldn’t be distracted by other things.

Here are the books I read:

Rambles Beyond Railways by Wilkie Collins in a restored Victorian edition was heaven, and a book that I could quite happily read over and over again.

Snapped in Cornwall by Janie Bolitho was a mystery built on classic lines, and it captured West Cornwall perfectly. A very solid start to a series.

Bell Farm by M R Barneby was a family tale, simple but very effective, and it painted wonderful pictures of the countryside and a seaside farming community.

Archelaus Hosken’ Dilemma by F J Warren was a little comic gem, cleverly constructed and a masterful piece of storytelling.

Love in the Sun and Paradise Creek by Leo Walmsley were my books of the year, telling stories and catching the magic of real lives absolutely perfectly.

Roots and Stars by C C Vyvyan was a memoir of fascinating twentieth century life. Lady Vyvyan was a writer, traveller and nature lover, and I was charmed. i’ll definitely be reading more of her work.

Sarah Strick by Randle Hurley was lovely collection of comical tales set in my hometown in the 1940s. I was charmed and I could quite believe that my grandparents had known these people.

Manna From Hades and A Colourful Mystery by Carola Dunn were cosy mysteries set in a rather idealised 1960s. That threw me for a while, I liked the cast and the stories (well the first story, the second was weak) and so I kept reading.

An Unsentimental Journey Through Cornwall by Mrs Craik was another wonderful Victorian travelogue. I loved the author and I loved seeing Cornwall through her observant and perceptive eyes.

The Burying Beetle by Ann Kelley was a gem. The day-to-day life of a twelve-year-old girl who is both seriously ill and wonderfully alive, perfectly observed and beautifully written.

I’m delighted with my dozen for 2010 and there will definitely be another dozen in 2011.

I’m going to tidy up my Cornish Reading page too, and, if anyone else is interesting in joining me, I might just set up a Cornish Reading blog. Let me know …

But back to the books. I already have three lined up:

Framed in Cornwall by Jane Bolitho is lined up for letter B in my crime fiction alphabet.

From East End to Lands End by Susan Soyinka is an account of the wartime evacuation of the pupils of the jews’ Free School in London to a Cornish fishing village. There is a wealth of detail and it is so engaging: a book for both head and heart.

The Bower Bird by Ann Kelley has already found its way home, because I so want to meet Gussie again.

And there are many, many more …

Victorian Musings

December 20, 2010 By in Challenges Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 12 Comments

Since I gave up on Trollope for the Classics Circuit a strange thing has happened. I thought that I would veer away from Victorian novels and towards something else. But that hasn’t happened. The great Victorian authors are calling me loudly.

It’s strange because the eight books I read this year for Our Mutual Read weren’t typical Victorian classics.

I read two wonderful travelogues by Victorian novelists who toured Cornwall: Rambles Beyond Railways by Wilkie Collins and an Unsentimental Journey Through Cornwall by Mrs Craik.

My third Victorian travelogue was an account of Thomas Cook’s first tour to Switzerland that was rediscovered after being lost for many years: Miss Jemima’s Swiss Journal.

Back with fiction I met two gentlemen – Mr Tress and Mr Pugh – with extraordinary stories to tell in Curios by Richard Marsh.

I read two wonderful French works from the Victorian era: The Child by Jules Vallès and One Thousand and One Ghosts by Alexandre Dumas.

And I read two works by Louisa May Alcott for Margot’s All Things Alcott  Challenge. Thank you Margot, for inspiring me! I read Eight Cousins and A Long and Fatal Love Chase. I had intended to read Harriet Reisen’s  biography too, but the year is winding down and it’s not a book I want to rush. Next year, definitely.

Eight wonderful Victorian books and two challenges completed.

But I dropped Trollope and drifted away from Dickens, and now they are calling me back.

This year life got a little too busy and so I think I rushed a little too much at my reading. And now I realise that what I need is to immerse myself in a long slow-paced book, the kind of the books that Victorian Authors did so well.

I’m looking forward to reading some Dickens over Christmas, and in the new year I’m going to pick up The Old Curiosity Shop again. I have learned that one of the great things about reading Dickens is his stickability: I can put his books down for ages but I still remember everything when I pick them up again.

And I’m signing up for The Victorian Literature Challenge at Words Words Words.

I’m not reading from a fixed list, I’m going to read the books that call and the books that I discover along the way.

But a few authors and books are calling particularly loudly:

I’m going to try Trollope again: I just need to pick the right book at the right time, and not go wrong as I did this year.

Lifetime Reader has inspired me to reread Thomas Hardy.

And this might just be my year to read Vanity Fair. My mother had been telling me to read it for years, and she’s generally right about these things.

Mrs Gaskell is one of her favourites, and that’s part of the reason why I’m signing up for the Gaskell Reading Challenge at Gaskell Blog too. I’ve only read Cranford, so I have a good number still to choose my two books from.

My mother is quite frail now and she doesn’t have the concentration or the short-term memory to do much reading, yet she remembers details of books like Cranford and Vanity Fair that she read st school more than fifty years ago.

She will be pleased to see me reading the books that she loves, and she remembers enough details for us to be able to talk about them.

It’s a tribute to the skills of many Victorian novelists, and to the power of a wonderful teacher whose words my mother can still quote too.

An Unsentimental Journey Through Cornwall by Mrs Craik

December 19, 2010 By in Book Reports, Reading Cornwall Tags: 3 Comments

It’s wonderful how books can lead you to other books.

Earlier in this year I fell utterly in love with Wilkie Collins’ Rambles Beyond Railways. A beloved author on top form writing of his travels in my homeland. Heaven!

And when I wrote about that book I was recommended another travelogue by a Victorian novelist: Mrs Craik’s An Unsentimental Journey Through Cornwall.

I placed an order at the library. I have to admit thought that at first I was a little disappointed with what arrived. A plain blue book that looked just like a school atlas. But then I opened it up and saw the title page. I had in my hands a rebound copy of the 1884 edition. Hooray for librarians with the wisdom to tuck away copies of special books!

I loved Mrs Craik from the very first paragraph:

“I believe in holidays. Not in a frantic rushing about from place to place, glancing at everything and observing nothing; flying from town to town, from hotel to hotel, eager to “do” and see a country, in order that when they get home they may say that they have done it, and seen it. Only to say;- as for any real vision of eye, heart, and brain, they might as well go through the world blindfold. It is not the things we see, but the mind we see them with, which makes the real interest of travelling.”

Poltesco

From the moment she and her two young companions cross the bridge over the Tamar into Cornwall she clearly sees everything, with eye, heart and brain.

The party travels down the south coast and up the north on a sixteen day tour.

They see so many sights: Mullion, Falmouth, Marazion, Tintagel, Boscastle …..

They run on beaches and swim in the sea. They love the sea and see not only it’s beauty, but also its power and its impact.

Gerran's Bay

But this isn’t just a book about places. It’s a book about people: Mrs Craik is most definitely what my mother would call a people person, and she writes wonderfully about the people she meets on her journey.

Cornish places are illuminated by Cornish lives.

There is much talk of myths and legends. Clearly this is a group of travellers who have read widely and are delighted to see the places they have read about.

St Michael's Mount

Fortunately their reading has left them well prepared. They were ready for the Cornish rain, and a downpour is accepted as a natural part of the Cornish experience. And they had knitting and reading to hand!

All of the details that you might recall of a wonderful holiday are present.

Mrs Craik writes about everything beautifully, reacting with exactly the right mixture of love, delight and good sense.

Imagine being captivated by tales of the trip of a lifetime from a good friend: that is just how An Unsentimental Journey Through Cornwall casts its spell.

It’s a book that I know that I will pick up again before too long.

Illustrations by C Napier Hemy